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Chapter Text

The siege was over.

The Lannisters and Freys were taking control of Riverrun.

And Brienne was still in the castle somewhere.

Jaime refused to run. If he did, it would draw the more obsequious of his men to him like large metal moths to the flame that was the chance to win the favor of their one-handed commander. He kept his expression level, and he walked as quickly as he dared past his men and through the underbelly of Riverrun as the Lannister and Frey armies rounded up the Tully household in the courtyard of the castle above. The tunnel beneath was quieter than the courtyard had been, and the sound faded further as Jaime followed it. It seemed the most likely place to find her; the Blackfish had not been in the courtyard to greet them, and it would be so very Brienne, to try and help the man escape.

Surely she can’t be so much a fool. But of course she could. He knew she was.

There were shouts from deeper in the tunnel. A clash of swords, growing louder, then going quiet quickly. His stomach tightened. So much for a peaceful surrender. He checked to make sure that none of his men had followed him, and the tunnel was empty behind him. He broke into a jog.

He needed Brienne to be safely away. The Lannister forces were distracted with ensuring the compliance of the hostages, but it wouldn’t take long for more men to come down this way and block off the tunnels to prevent escape. He couldn’t let her linger. He knew that she would linger if Tully gave some fool, impassioned speech about honor and duty, because Brienne of Tarth was too easy to sway with pretty words like those. She would be moved by the old man’s courage, and she would be killed by the old man’s courage. Jaime could not allow it.

He scarcely understood why he was so determined to save her. He had warned her. He had all but begged her in his tent, their eyes locked as they spoke about the possibility of battle, but of course she was still here. She never listened to him. Even after they formed something of a respect for each other on the road from Harrenhal, she was always so sure she knew better than him. Always so suspicious of every well-intentioned piece of advice or comfort he tried to offer. She had stopped calling him Kingslayer eventually. Offered him the title of Ser Jaime, and seemed to recognize how much it meant to him. She believed too much in his goodness, and she trusted him more than she should have. Still. She had her own ideas of honor, and they would not allow her to listen to him when it counted the most. And it all came to this: Brienne very honorably getting herself caught in a siege she should be far away from.

And Jaime, scrambling through a dimly lit tunnel, desperately trying to clean up the mess.

The mess. Jaime Lannister was the mess. The Lannisters and the Freys, snatching the ancestral home of the Tullys from the fucking Blackfish: a man who had long been a hero of Jaime’s. How had it gotten to this point? How had Jaime allowed it to get to this point? He lost his sword hand and returned to Kings Landing to find that he had lost a lot more than just the five fingers and the palm to hold a blade in. He thought he could make something of it. Use it as a reason to be better. Become again the boy who had worshipped Brynden Tully and who had dreamed of knighthood and all it entailed. Protecting the innocent instead of solely extending his efforts to shield his guilty family from the consequences of their choices. Meeting Brienne had made him remember a time before Kingslayer. It made him want to try. Why had he stopped?

Cersei, he knew. It all came back to love. It always had, with him. It just felt more disappointing this time. He had been so sure that he could change. Maybe that had been naïve. Maybe a man like him couldn’t change.

Perhaps he was always fated to grow into a monster, no matter what the boy he was had wanted him to be.

He increased his pace and ducked his head past a wooden beam. The tunnel grew slightly wider, though it grew no taller. The walls became rough-hewn rock. The torches were more spread out, and darkness yawned between them. There was a dead man quite suddenly at his feet, in the shadow. Lannister armor. Another up ahead.  Jaime tripped past them, his golden hand scraping along the rock wall as he placed it there for balance. He stumbled as the shadows messed with his perception. There was another dead man, just ahead. He wondered if the blades had been driven home by Brienne or the Blackfish. It could have been either. He had seen Brienne take down three men before. She made it look as simple as it had once been for him, before he lost his hand and more than half of the skill that had come with it.

She really was a remarkable woman, for all she was also a stubborn fool.

He rounded a corner, and at last he saw her. She looked bigger than ever in this small, narrow space. Her frame filled the tunnel the same way it had filled his tent, leaving it feeling empty when she had gone. She was speaking to the Blackfish. Her voice was too low to hear, but the urgency was obvious. She was tugging on his arm. The insane woman was trying to get him to abandon the castle. Jaime sighed, a performative exhalation that carried down to them. They both looked in his direction. Brienne’s expression was impassive, but he could see the surprise in her features. Surprise, and wariness, too. She eyed his left hand near his sword.

Honor compels me to fight for Sansa’s kin, she had said in the tent, and Jaime could see the way her own words were haunting her now. To fight you.

Jaime had no intention of drawing his blade, but Brienne stepped forward until she was fully in front of Brynden Tully. She pulled her sword from its scabbard. Oathkeeper, he thought. And she means to keep my oaths for me, if I’m too much a Lannister to keep them myself. Even if it means running a sword through my gut.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“Ser Jaime, please,” she said, and she set her stance wider.

“I will not surrender,” the Blackfish said at the same moment.

“I was speaking to the lady,” Jaime replied. He was trying for sarcastic, trying to pretend that the daggers the Blackfish glared in his direction weren’t piercing. There was sweat on his brow; it trickled down his temple. He dared not wipe it away. “Brienne, I can’t let you take him.”

“And I can’t let you stop me,” Brienne replied. “I told you it might come to this.”

Jaime continued to move closer. He still didn’t draw his sword, but he kept his hand on it, just in case. In case of what, exactly? Did he really think he could draw against Brienne?

Perhaps he could, if it came to it. He’d like at least to die with sword in hand, if only to spare the poor girl the trauma of striking down an unarmed man she once may have thought of fondly, despite all his many faults.

“And I told you that I hoped it wouldn’t,” he said softly. Brienne’s sword did not waver, but her expression did. He couldn’t look away from her eyes.

“It doesn’t have to,” she said. It was almost a whisper.

“My lady,” the Blackfish warned her gently, still close behind her. “We must go.”

“Uncle.”

Jaime’s eyes left Brienne’s for long enough to see the figure that appeared in the tunnel behind her. It was impossible, yet Jaime would know the boy anywhere. He spent a year chained up in the Stark camp, visited periodically by the King in the North with his great grey beast beside him. Jaime had done his best to comfort Brienne when they received word on the road that the idiot boy had died with his mother and wife at that cursed wedding, but he hadn’t exactly mourned the loss himself. He had heard tales from the Freys. Bragging, endless tales about cutting the boy’s head from his body and sewing his wolf’s on in its place. The idea made Joffrey laugh and Tywin and Cersei smile and Tyrion wince while Jaime tried to think of nicer things so he didn’t have to imagine it.

“No,” he said, forgetting to be calm or wry or amused or whatever it was he was trying to achieve here. “Brienne…”

He could almost hear the songs already. The Return of the Wolf. The Young Wolf Rises. Triumphant stories of the boy who never lost a battle but who lost the war for love, born again to take revenge. Sentiment was already firmly turned against the Lannisters. Cersei may not have wanted to hear it, but Tommen held to his throne only through what remained of the realm’s fear of their father. When the smallfolk heard that Robb Stark was still alive despite all the Lannisters had done…

“Get in the boat,” Brienne said over her shoulder.

“We can’t wait forever,” Robb warned her. Jaime couldn’t stop looking at him, hoping to see an illusion. A trick. This was some Tully cousin they hoped to use as a decoy. Some scheme to win favor in the war the Starks were fighting against the Boltons.

No. Stark turned his poisonous glare in Jaime’s direction, and it was him. He was so much his mother and father at once. Ned looking at him, judgement in his gaze, as Jaime sat on the throne with Aerys dead at his feet. Catelyn trembling with fury, staring down at him, after he told her that he had pushed her son from that tower. The hatred and the judgement and the disdain were nothing new, but it was perhaps more potent now, with Brienne standing between them.

“It won’t take long,” Brienne said, and both men vanished into the darkness behind her. Jaime had begun to advance again, but he stopped when she spoke the words. He wanted to feel betrayed. He wanted to say “Brienne” in a small, hurt voice, like a much younger man. A child asking for answers the Septon couldn’t give. “Why?”

“I must warn you I’ve been practicing,” he said instead. Brienne’s eyes closed for more than a blink, a half-second to center herself, but then they opened again, made glimmering and orange by the torchlight. He used to think it was funny that she could be so much a maiden in the body she had been given. A soft heart beneath all those muscles and her massive height. Some cruelty of the gods made her fall in love with poor, dead Renly, and they made her too much man for most but not man enough to secure the heart of the one she wanted. He didn’t think it was funny anymore.

“As have I,” she said. Her maiden’s heart is breaking. The thought came unbidden, and Jaime shoved it aside. He stepped closer. His left hand still held his sword, but still he did not draw it. She met his eyes, and her chin raised as she looked at him.

“You’d do it, wouldn’t you?” he asked. He could hear the Blackfish barking orders at someone down at the water’s edge. They meant to make their escape on a boat, then. He suddenly wanted her on it. Away from him. Take the bloody Stark boy and go, he wanted to sneer, but he didn’t. When he did speak, his voice was very quiet. He felt oddly short of breath. Removed. “For the Starks, you would strike me down. Kill me as you’re supposed to have killed Renly.”

If that was too close an acknowledgement of her care for him, Brienne didn’t show it. She didn’t get defensive as he thought she would. Her maiden’s heart might be breaking, but her warrior’s facade did not crack.

“I didn’t kill Renly,” she said. “Stannis did that. And I killed Stannis.”

A boast from anyone else. From her, it was a warning. A reminder, too, that he had struggled to fight her even when he was whole—the irons and the year of captivity had been bad, but they weren’t a missing sword hand. If he tried to fight her now, she would cut through him like wet sand. The best he could hope for would be delaying the inevitable until his men could come to his aid, but then he would have to take her in, and Cersei would…

No. He released the hilt of his sword, and he took a demonstrative step back.

“You would have done it,” he said. Brienne slid Oathkeeper back into place with a look that was mingled fear and relief at once.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good,” he replied. “Now go. Before my men realize you’ve taken my most valuable political prisoner and one we didn’t even know existed.”

There was still a glimmer in Brienne’s eyes as she nodded and turned to go. He also caught the slight edge of a smile. The smallest upturn of her lips. She thought he had done a good and honorable thing, of course. She used to think the worst of him beyond all rationality, and now it seemed to be the opposite. Despite all evidence, she was too quick to assume his honor and his good intentions. If only his sister’s affections were so easy to win over with a few gifts.

He followed her at a distance. Brienne settled into the boat. Her squire was there already, preparing to row. At least she had listened to Jaime about that. The Blackfish and Robb Stark were in the boat as well, camouflaged in Tully-blue cloaks that looked black in the darkness.

If Cersei knew what Jaime had let slip away…

He raised his golden hand when Brienne turned back to look, when they had already begun to melt away into the fog. Brienne hesitated, but then she raised her hand as well. He stood and watched until he could no longer see them.

Next time, he wouldn’t be so lucky. Cersei was always calling him a fool, and perhaps she was right. He was a fool to think he could simply meet Brienne of Tarth as friends. The honorable woman and her absurd fondness for the oathbreaker. As long as he continued to stand against the family she had sworn herself to, she would continue to stand against him.

It would have destroyed her to kill him, but she would have done it, and he would have deserved it. Perhaps she wouldn’t have felt honorable to do it, but the rest of the world would have cheered her. The Kingslayer slayed at last by a woman as virtuous as she was ugly. The songs would last for a thousand years, and the singers would never know how either of them truly felt for each other. How could they? He and Brienne hardly understood themselves.

He returned to his men. He said nothing of Brienne, nor of the Blackfish. He accepted the news of Tully’s apparent escape with an incline of his head and some distracted comment about Tully’s slyness. When they asked if they should go after him, Jaime shook his head and said something about not wanting to waste resources on one old knight. He sent for Bronn, instead, because Bronn was the only one he could trust, terrifying as that was. Brienne would need horses and provisions if she was going to make it back north in time to assist her lady.

In the morning, he and his army would begin the return trip towards Kings Landing. Towards Cersei. And Jaime would pretend that he was as eager to get back to her as he had been only hours ago.

Chapter Text

Everything had been easier when Robb was dead.

According to his mother’s uncle, he never was dead. His injuries had bled him nearly dry, but they hadn’t killed him; you fainted, the Blackfish had claimed in his dry, disdainful tone. That’s all.

In the chaos, Brynden had been able to sneak Robb away from the Twins, carried by a few loyal men. They ran into little trouble on the road, because they had fled north instead of south. Robb had been cared for. Watched closely as he clung to life. Treated better than you deserved was implied in Brynden’s quiet disgust. Implied, too, was Robb’s survival. You never died. You fainted. That’s all. But Robb knew better.

The memories had faded, but there was a time when he remembered clearly: their faces. The dead. The gods. Watching him. There were whispers in fog, and there were trees. Heart trees, with their white faces and their red leaves and their silent judgement. Not one, like the one in the godswood at Winterfell, but many. Thousands spread out, a white and haunting wood, rows and rows of them half-hidden in mist. He had tried to speak. His chest had still burned from the arrows. He had remembered his losses, and he had wept.

And then he was alive again.

It was a week since he had lost the war, and his mother’s uncle was standing over him.

“You’re alive,” Brynden had said. He was hard and unrelenting. His voice spoke clearly of his opinion of Robb’s continued survival after all his mistakes. Robb felt like a child in his bed. It was the first time he had truly hated himself for choosing what he had. That feeling would not fade with time. “You’re the only one.”

He had left the room, then, likely assuming that Robb wanted to be alone to cry for the lost war and the lost wife and the lost mother, but Robb had already done that in the wood, and he found that he had no more tears. Instead, there was a nothing inside him. A blankness.

For another week, they stayed in Greywater Watch. Robb’s physical strength came back quick enough, but his mind wandered whenever he was left alone for too long, and sometimes in the middle of conversation he would stop, frozen, and forget what he had been saying. There were times Brynden or his father’s friend Howland Reed would have to repeat his name several times before he realized they were speaking to him, though he had been looking directly at them, and though he had been hearing every word they spoke.

Why am I here? he often asked the gods, but they never found it fit to answer. Not even in the dreams when he could feel them near.

He saw his sisters in his dreams. He saw his brothers, too. He saw his mother dying, and his wife dying, her unborn child cradled in her stomach beneath her bloody hands. He saw and tried to speak, but could only watch and choke on desperate groans.

Bran, once, turned and looked directly at him, and he spoke Robb’s name. He was taller than he had been. Almost a man. Robb didn’t dream of him again.

“I was dead,” he would say to Brynden often.

“You were not,” Brynden would reply.

“Howland led us the quietest route back to Riverrun,” Brynden was saying to Lady Brienne. She manned the oars without complaint, though she had been rowing for hours. Brynden had tried to take her spot, but she persisted, and it was probably a good choice. They were making impossible time.

Robb remembered her from before, of course, though they hadn’t had much opportunity to speak. She had been his mother’s shadow. A quiet, intense woman who would have gladly died for Catelyn Stark. He would have liked to have seen her fight, but he had been ahead in the tunnel when she stopped the Lannister men from following.

“I’m surprised you were able to get in,” Brienne said. Her voice was as steady as the rest of her. It matched her exactly.

“It was under siege, but not quite to the extent you saw tonight. We got in the same way we just got out. The Freys have always been incompetent.”

“I’ve heard it said,” Brienne agreed. Her low voice was just amused enough to be comforting, though Robb had so far been afraid to truly meet her eyes. He would see judgement there, he knew. He would see loathing. Brienne had sworn herself to his mother, and Robb’s selfish choices had seen his mother killed.

He had not forgiven himself. Brynden hadn’t forgiven him, either. It was easy to imagine that he never would. Robb expected that it would take Brienne just as long.

Brynden glanced back at him briefly, to see if he was awake. His expression was difficult to read in the darkness, and he didn’t say anything. Just turned back around to continue speaking to Brienne.

“We stayed in Riverrun because Robb needed to recover, and then it was a matter of not wanting the Freys to know he was alive. They would have redoubled their efforts, and by then the north had already fallen to the Boltons. We had nowhere left to turn. There weren’t enough people to take back Winterfell.”

“There still may not be,” Brienne reminded him grimly.

“Perhaps,” the Blackfish agreed. “But the Bastard of the Night’s Watch is meant to be a fearsome fighter, and there is still love for the Starks in the north. They may surprise us.”

Brienne lapsed into silence, and Robb watched her back, clad in that deep blue armor. It was handy camouflage as they rowed through the night, though sometimes the moonlight caught on her pale hair and gleamed.

She looked like something out of a myth. The strong warrior maid rowing the unworthy king to safety.

She rowed competently, the way she did everything. The boat was stable, with minimal rocking. Her squire Podrick had managed to fall asleep. Robb was meant to be sleeping as well, but found it impossible. He grew easily fatigued since the injuries he sustained at the wedding, but now he found that freedom coursed through him, and his eyes could not stay closed.

His gaze drifted to the sword that Brienne wore at her hip. The lion’s head pommel, the glittering ruby that was its eye. It winked at him every time it caught the moonlight, teasing him, reminding him of the way the Kingslayer had looked at Brienne when she drew that sword to use it against him.

It would take a much stupider man than Robb Stark to miss the possibility that the Kingslayer had given Brienne of Tarth that sword. Valyrian steel was quite a gift to give, especially to a woman sworn to one’s enemies, but why else would it be so clearly marked as Lannister? The belt she wore it on had lion heads and sunbursts: a marriage of their house sigils.

Robb had learned from Brynden that the Kingslayer found his way back to Kings Landing eventually. Short a hand, the stories said, and with the Tarth heir in tow. Arya and Sansa had not been traded; whether Catelyn’s plan would have worked was impossible to say. Robb still doubted it, but the Red Wedding had already happened, and there wouldn’t have been anyone for the girls to be traded to. He hadn’t heard anything of Lady Brienne since, and he had assumed she was still in the dungeons somewhere, if she hadn’t been executed. He had to wonder now at the fact that she had been allowed to leave. Had it been repayment for ensuring the Kingslayer’s return? Had they any idea she was going to use their gifts and her granted freedom to find Sansa? Perhaps she had made them believe she was on their side. Or perhaps in her naivety she had meant to work with them, only to learn the truth of their monstrousness from Sansa herself. Robb could not question Brienne’s honor or her dedication to the oaths she had sworn to his mother, but he could question everything else.

What were her allegiances to the Kingslayer? What were her allegiances to the Lannister house? She had not allowed Jaime Lannister to take Robb and Brynden. She had drawn her sword and stood against him. Perhaps that should have been proof enough, but Robb no longer trusted in the way he used to. No alliance could be counted on completely. People were too unpredictable. They had too many disparate wants.

And Robb of all people knew how easily the best intentions of the most honorable person could be twisted in on themselves and made into unforgivable errors.

Brienne was the next one to turn and check on him. When she saw that he was still awake, her eyes lingered on his. Her blank expression was maddening. Did she see? Did she know about his fears and his doubts? When she turned again to face the front, her shoulders were higher, tense. She was as awkward as he remembered, but she was more self-assured. Harder, too.

“My sister,” he said, finally forcing the words out. “You said she’s safe?”

Brienne hesitated. Her shoulders came up even higher, like she meant to disappear behind them to protect the back of her neck from his gaze.

“She was safe when I left her,” she said. “As safe as anyone could be.”

Robb nodded, though she wasn’t looking at him. Some days, he could barely remember what Sansa sounded like. He could remember her face. He remembered the way she felt in his arms when he hugged her the last time, in the courtyard at Winterfell. She had been smiling, then, giddy and excited, and that was how he always remembered her, though he knew that her smile would have faded some, after all she had been through. Same as him. But her voice escaped him. Even in his dreams, she was silent.

“And Jon?” he asked.

“Jon Snow is a good man,” Brienne said. “I didn’t have much time to know him, but your sister trusts him. That’s enough for me.”

She lapsed into another uncomfortable silence, and this time, Robb allowed it to keep. He closed his eyes for a time, but that didn’t last. He watched the stars instead as the boat continued down the river.

How much did Sansa know about his choices? Did she know that Robb refused to trade the Kingslayer for she and Arya? Did she know that their mother had to steal the Lannister heir and send him to Kings Landing for hope of a trade with only a single loyal woman for a guard? Did she know that Robb punished Catelyn for it? Kept her locked away in her tent like a child because she tried to save the daughters that Robb would not?

There were times as he recovered in Greywater Watch that Robb thought about Jon in particular. It was easier to look back at his choices after the war was lost, because there was no more pressure to make the right ones. The wrong steps had already been taken. He had already chosen poorly.

How different would things have been if he had agreed to an official trade of Jaime Lannister for Sansa and Arya? How different would they have been if he had married Roslin Frey the way he was meant to? His mother would still be alive. Talisa would still be alive. The north wouldn’t be under the control of the Boltons, and Sansa wouldn’t have been married twice to their family’s enemies. He had failed in every way as a king and as a brother, and he would think about Jon.

What would Jon have done? If it was Jon in charge of their northern army and the strategy of war, what would he have chosen?

Jon and Sansa were never close, before. Sansa had absorbed their mother’s hostility towards Jon in a way none of the other siblings had, and she maintained a polite veneer that was still a form of distance between herself and her half-brother. Still, Robb had a hard time imagining that Jon would have left her in Kings Landing if he thought there had been any choice. Even if Arya hadn’t been involved. Even if it hadn’t been his favorite sibling. Jon would have done anything for his family. There had been a time when Robb would have said the same about himself. When had that stopped being true?

On their third day in Greywater Watch, Howland Reed had asked to speak with Robb. He had sat in the empty chair beside Robb’s bed, and he had checked Robb’s bandages before he began the conversation. Howland was a small, curious-looking man who smiled often, if a bit distantly. He spoke of his children but never introduced them. He asked after Robb’s dreams too often to merely be coincidence. He unsettled Robb generally, but he was a kind man, and he had risked much to take Robb in.

On that day, Howland said, “did you know that I knew your father? During the rebellion?”

Robb had known that much, but he hadn’t known the rest. The story that followed was impossible, but Robb had no reason to think that Howland was lying, so he believed him instead. Howland described the bloody battle at the foot of the Tower of Joy, and how every man but he and Ned were killed. He described the babe in Ned’s arms. He revealed a truth that could have been horrible and could have been devastating, except for the fact that he described it so gently that Robb could only think of what he would have done. If it was Sansa or Arya dying in that birthing bed, and it was their child who needed to be protected, would he have made the choice his father had?

Jon wouldn’t have hesitated. Jon would have claimed that child as his own. He would have raised that child as his own. Jon was going to war for a sister who never fully loved him. A sister who wasn’t even a sister. And what had Robb done but wallow and grieve and recover too slowly to be of any use to anyone?

They reached the shore, and Brienne led them to an inn where they spent too much gold on questionable stew and lice-ridden beds. They sat in the common room to eat, all of them with hoods pulled up. They weren’t the only people trying to avoid attention. The Riverlands was the safest place to be if you were running from one of the wars and the armies that waged them, as long as you didn’t mind the bandits.

The people who had nothing to hide spoke loudly, longing to be overheard, because they carried news. The surrender of Riverrun to the Lannisters. The Freys being rewarded for their betrayal of the Starks. News traveled fast.

Podrick secured horses for them somehow, and they left the inn early the following morning.

“What if Lannister sends his men after us?” Brynden had pointed out, and Brienne had nodded and agreed to leave while it was still dark, though Robb could tell from her expression that she didn’t believe he would.

Remembering the way the Kingslayer had looked at Brienne, all surprised hurt, when she drew her sword, Robb didn’t think he would send anyone either.  

And there was, too, the matter of the horses. The mare that Podrick led to Brienne snuffled at her ear as if she knew her, and the saddlebags were stuffed with provisions. Brienne smiled when she looked inside one of them, though she tried to hide it. There was a crimson blanket rolled up behind the saddle. It was a finer bedroll than the blue ones that the rest of them had been given.

Podrick was a good lad, and a good squire, but he would have had to pay a fortune for four horses and that kind of gear. And where would the boy have even found those kinds of provisions in the middle of the war-torn countryside?

Did he send the horses, Lady Brienne? Robb longed to ask. He didn’t. Brynden would likely refuse the mounts if he suspected they came from the Lannister camp, and Robb didn’t feel like walking.

They rode hard through the second day. Robb had slept poorly at the inn, and he listed in his saddle, still not used to so much exertion. He had made a habit of sparring nearly every day in Riverrun to get his strength back, but he no longer had the heart for it, and he still drifted at odd moments. A listlessness that came over him. A lack of care, where it seemed pointless to keep trying. His sword arm wasn’t as strong as it used to be, and his constitution was even weaker. An infection in his recovery bed, Howland had claimed. Something in the lungs. But Brynden had been doubtful, and Robb was doubtful, too. It wasn’t his lungs that troubled him. It wasn’t his lungs that stopped working at odd moments and left him feeling shattered. It was just him, his mind, his guilt and his fractured sense of self. It wasn’t something that had such an easy cause. He had failed, and he was guilty for it. He was still healing, and still growing stronger, but it would take more time.

He had dreamed of Jon, the night before. Jon staring at him and judging him. Standing between he and the rest of his siblings. Protecting them from the brother who failed them, who didn’t love them enough, who had given up on them.

Please, he tried to say. I’m home. I’m sorry. But Jon had only growled like a warning dog, and he drove Robb back and back and away, into the white forest with the fog and the accusing eyes of the old gods. 

Days passed in riding. More days, and more inns. The story of Brynden’s escape had spread. They were saying he swam down the river to get past the siege lines, and that Edmure Tully had laughed in the Kingslayer’s face when he heard. The tale-tellers all crowed about the Blackfish living up to his name. Even Brynden couldn’t help but crack a smile to hear their mirth at the Frey army’s misfortunes.

The news from Riverrun was welcome, but it was nothing compared to the news from the north.

The Battle of the Bastards, they were calling it. The Bolton force demolished outside Winterfell. Ramsay Bolton killed. Sansa Stark and Jon Snow taking back Winterfell with a cobbled-together army of wildlings and northern loyalists who refused to turn their backs on the family they once swore allegiance to.

They said, too, that Jon Snow had died, and had risen, and had now been named King of the North.

Robb was glad that Jon and Sansa had not needed him. He was glad that they were able to take back Winterfell without him. He was glad that they were safe.

He was glad, and yet he needed to leave the inn to stand in the snow outside to catch his breath.

He heard footsteps behind him eventually. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it had grown colder, and the sun was fully gone. He expected his uncle, but when he turned, it was Brienne who had followed him. She held to the pommel of that sword the way she always did. Like it was a reminder of who she was. But who was she? What did she need the reminder of?

“I’m fine, Lady Brienne,” he said.

“Your uncle thought I should check.” 

Brienne smiled at him. It was small, her lips barely rising at all, but he could see the way her eyes softened. It made the smile seem bigger than it was.

“Your sword,” he said, and the smile faded. She held it tighter. “The Kingslayer gave it to you.”

She hesitated, but answered, “yes.”

“Valyrian steel, and a Lannister pommel at that.”

“It was made for Ser Jaime. He gifted it to me when he tasked me with finding your sister.”

“Tywin Lannister must have shit himself when he found out.”

“I’m not sure he ever knew.”

“I hope he did. He would have hated it.”

“He would have.” She smiled a bit at the thought. She stepped closer to him, and he could see that she was worried. “You should come back inside. It’s cold.”

“You don’t know what to call me,” he noted. “You never use a title, because I have none.”

“Your grace,” Brienne said, but she hesitated, and he knew he was right.

“I’m not king anymore. That’s Jon.”

“For now,” Brienne conceded. Robb frowned at her.

“You think I would take his crown?”

“No,” Brienne said. She hesitated again, but she didn’t say ‘your grace’ at the end, like he had been sure she would. “The lords had a choice to make. Between Lady Sansa and King Jon.”

“A girl and a bastard,” Robb elaborated for her, because he knew she wouldn’t say it. Brienne nodded. “You think they made the wrong choice,” he said. Brienne was plainly unhappy to be asked, but he knew it to be true.

“Your sister is strong in the same way your mother was,” she said. “And your mother would have been a good queen.”

“She would have been,” Robb agreed. He felt more like himself, his breathing steady and no longer quite so panicked. He could even give her a crooked smile. “I was so furious with her when she gave you the Kingslayer.”

“I imagine you would have been,” Brienne said. Her smile was more visible, now. Quietly proud. “But I was sworn to your mother, not to you.”

At that last bit, her words were harsher. Defensive. Worried, perhaps, that he still held some grudge. He didn’t want to tell her that he found it difficult to hold on to any feelings for long these days. Anger came in sharp, stabbing points but then left him, ebbed out of him, settled back to blankness. He wasn’t the rash boy he used to be.

“I should have listened to her from the start,” he said. “Perhaps the trade wouldn’t have won me any favors with my men, but everyone knows the Lannisters pride themselves on paying their debts. It might have worked.”

“They never had Arya,” Brienne reminded him gently, but he knew that she agreed with him. “And Sansa is safe now. Back at home.”

“Yes,” Robb admitted. He kept the bitterness out of his voice, but only barely. She suffered for years in the meantime because I failed to help her. “Thank you.” Brienne nodded, and she turned to head back into the inn. Robb followed her.

Sansa was safe, and back at home. No thanks to me, he wanted to say. The brother who abandoned her. Why would she want me back?

For that matter, why would anyone?

Something had died inside him the night his wife and mother were killed. The night he lost the war for the north and failed his family. Something died and stayed dead even when the rest of him rose. He wasn’t the Young Wolf any longer. He was barely Robb Stark any longer. He was going home, but it hardly felt like it. It felt instead like he was headed for a second execution.

If only he had been allowed to die. It would have been much simpler. Perhaps his siblings could have loved his memory if he was too dead to hate. What would they think of him now that he was still alive?

Chapter Text

“I don’t care what they think about it,” Sansa said.

The cook was scowling at her, but Sansa pretended not to notice as she returned to scribbling in the ledger on the table. “They’ll have to be satisfied with a few extra lumps of meat in their broth as celebration. The Bolton army wiped out most of our stores, and until we can be sure of enough to last the winter, we can’t afford to waste what we do have on extravagance. There will be no feast.”

The cook gave a rather poor curtsey and grumbled her way out of the hall. From the opposite door came a low laugh. Not as familiar as Sansa would have liked—her half-brother preferred to go around scowling when he wasn’t looking about anxiously for someone to advise him—but familiar enough to lighten her mood considerably. She turned to smile at him, and Jon entered the kitchen, hesitant, looking taller and broader than usual in the new fur cloak she’d made for him.

“She wasn’t very diplomatic,” he said in greeting. He had this quiet way of smiling that Sansa liked. Barely a smile at all, but it crinkled the corners of his eyes, and she knew it was real. She had seen it more often in the past few days, since the funerals for men who had fallen in the battle had all been finished. Jon had seemed less burdened since.

“I think I prefer the ones who aren’t diplomatic,” she said. Lord Baelish’s smooth courtesies came to mind, but it wasn’t just him. The servants that remained who had also served under Ramsay Bolton looked at her with pity and they spoke to her with kindness, and there were times when she appreciated it. Other times…

Anger wasn’t a rational emotion. Sometimes, hers left her breathless with its force. To the maids who offered her sympathetic smiles when she woke screaming in the night, she wanted to bare her scars and remind them how they could not look her in the eye for shame in the months in which they cleaned her bedding and brushed her hair and ignored her pleas for help. In those furious moments, it mattered not at all that they had also been prisoners. Worse off, too, not having the safety of a high birth to protect them from Ramsay’s cruel whims. At least when the cook or the stablemaster or the guards on the battlements were indifferent or even rude to her, she knew that they hadn’t been in Winterfell when she was Ramsay’s prisoner, and she knew that they didn’t share that same strange pity.

“What were you saying about a feast?” Jon asked. He took another few steps into the room. He was always oddly tentative early in the morning. Perhaps he heard her when she screamed herself awake from those nightmares and was afraid to add to her discomfort. It seemed every day like he had to relearn their new camaraderie. Or at least to make sure that it still applied.

Perhaps it wasn’t about her fears at all; perhaps he feared that he would wake one day and find her as dismissive and haughty as she used to be when they were children.

“She thinks we need a feast to raise our spirits,” Sansa said. She held him out a piece of warm bread from the loaf the cook left on the table. Jon took it with a grateful smile and looked considering as he chewed it. She read the look correctly. “Don’t you start. I’m in a mood to fight today.”

“I’ll tread carefully,” Jon replied. His growing good humor shone through in his eyes. “I was just thinking that you never would have turned down the opportunity for a feast before. You would have hounded your mother until she relented.”

Sansa smiled. She could almost hear her mother’s voice. It would have been sharp, and reaching the end of her patience.

“By the gods, Sansa,” she mimicked. “We can’t throw a feast every time you want to dance with some boy.”

Jon laughed, surprising her. Surprising himself, too, from the way he went quiet after.

“That was good,” he said, finally. “You sounded like her.”

Not just like her, I hope. Sansa loved her mother. She missed her mother. She had yet to really reckon with the fact that in her eagerness to please her mother, she had avoided and denied and hurt the only brother she had remaining to her. She wasn’t that girl anymore, but she knew he still regarded her with a wariness that she had earned as a child and couldn’t do anything about now. It would take some time yet for it to heal.

“Lots of practice,” she said, brushing it away. “Arya and I used to mimic her when we were younger and she wasn’t letting us get our way. She hated it. She would have been right, though; perhaps a feast would be good for morale, but we don’t know how long supplies are going to last, and I refuse to copy the queen and gorge our bannermen while the smallfolk starve.”

“You’re nothing like Cersei,” Jon said. He had said so before, but she always liked to hear it.

“I don’t want to be,” she said. There was a familiar discomfort within her when she looked at Jon and thought of Cersei. She ignored it. “What did you need?”

“Just to update you. Tormund’s party chased down the last of the Bolton men. They chose to fight rather than submit.”

“Any survivors?”

“No.”

“Good,” Sansa said. She made herself smile, hoping to banish that worried furrow that every day dug deeper into Jon’s forehead. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course,” Jon said. He lay his gloved hand very briefly over her own to squeeze her fingers. A kind gesture. Comfort and assurance and perhaps reassurance for himself that she was safe. Then he lumbered on his way to wherever his duties as king would take him next.

Sansa had begun to find peace in standing on the battlements and looking out at the snowy plains beyond her walls. They seemed to stretch forever, especially when the snowfall obscured the trees and the ridges in the distance. Everything in the world was endless white. Her home. It was a good way to remind herself that she was no longer a prisoner. The snow meant it wasn’t Kings Landing, and the plains were so flat that she knew immediately that it wasn’t The Vale. The white wolf flag flew over the walls in place of the atrocity that had flown for the Boltons. All of her demons could be banished in a single look.

It was also a good spot because Lord Baelish hated the wind and the fact that everyone could watch them when they stood up there. It was the safest place to be when she was too tired to deal with him on top of everything else. She headed up after she was finished with inventory in the kitchen.

Jon was in the courtyard below, talking with Davos. He didn’t look up and see her, and that was just as well. He spent enough time worrying about her. She pulled her hood up against the wind.

When I came back, I felt nothing. Just hurt. Anger. That’s all there was until you asked me to fight.

Barely a week ago, the night he was crowned king, when he came to her chambers and tried in his clumsy, awkward way to reassure her that he would protect her as best as he could. The lords may have chosen him to rule, but he would keep her counsel. He would make sure that she was listened to. He wouldn’t ever let her be married off to secure some alliance. He would keep her safe.

She appreciated his words, and she appreciated his nervousness, as much as that anger still burned in her, knowing she was not enough for the lords to choose her. But it was that desperate admission that stuck with her even days later. She could see it in him often, now that she knew. There was an uncertainty to him. A lack of balance. She knew she had been too careful with him since they talked, but she didn’t know how else to act. She couldn’t stop wondering: was he the same Jon she had known as a girl? Or was he something else? He didn’t seem sure himself. I came back different, he had insisted, but he could not answer her when she asked how.

She barely knew him before, when they were children. That was her fault. She never wanted to know him, because it wasn’t right, and because she wanted her mother to think she was a good girl. Or that she was on her mother’s side, maybe.

He had always been kind. She remembered that. Even though she had not spent much time with him, she had known enough to know that he was safe. Awkward around girls, stumbling over his words much more than Robb or Theon. You should always tell a girl her name is pretty, she had offered once, after witnessing his failure to charm a traveler from Wintertown. He’d gone a bit red at that, but he had smiled, and he had thanked her. His voice had been so surprised. Because you were never kind to him, she remembered.

So, he had been kind. Quiet. Awkward. That was all she had known of him before. She had never been interested in learning anything else.

And then he had died. And then he had come back to life. And he said himself that he was different from how he used to be.

He was Jon. She knew him. She trusted him. She kept her every doubt buried down deep.

And it didn’t matter, anyway, if Jon was different; Sansa was different too. For all that Jon tried to treat her as if she was the same little girl he had grown up so apart from, he wasn’t the only one who had moments of hollowness and hatred.

He was gentle with her, and she didn’t think him capable of hurting her. If anything, he was too gentle. He forgot that she had seen and experienced terrible things, and he treated her like some delicate maiden that he had to protect. A little sister, not an equal or a partner. Some days she didn’t mind that; some days she needed it. But some days she chafed under it. He was supposed to be different from the rest of them. Nobody had ever believed her capable. Not her father. Not Arya. Not Cersei. Not Joffrey. Nobody.

Nobody wanted to believe that she could stand on her own. Jon needed her to be the family he clung to when he was unconvinced of his own humanity. Littlefinger liked to believe that she wanted the same things he did, and he liked to believe that he was the only man clever enough to give them to her. Even to Brienne, Sansa was less a person and more a way to keep an oath made to Sansa’s mother. A girl who needed protecting because Brienne made a promise to someone long dead and because she must have been the only person left in all of Westeros who thought promises actually meant something.

Sansa wasn’t herself to anybody, and she didn’t know how to fix that. She wasn’t skilled in being herself any longer. Her only skill was in hiding. Pretty masks that kept every true feeling behind a veil.

She breathed in the bracing northern wind and looked out at the snow. Why had she ever wanted to leave this place? Why had she ever believed that she needed to go? There was power to be had here. Not the kind that Littlefinger wanted, but a kind of power that was older and deeper. She was strong here, in her home.

She searched the road south for any sign of Brienne. She had been waiting for word of her sworn sword ever since the first raven had arrived. Brienne wasn’t one for dissembling, so the secret she carried must have been important, for her to have even made the attempt.

Lady Sansa, the letter had read. I am returning to Winterfell with important persons thought lost. Riverrun has fallen to the Freys. There will be no army to assist you.

Brienne had surely heard on the road that the army would not be needed, but the letter was scrawled in haste, so she must not have known it then. Her mention of important persons thought lost had haunted Sansa since. She knew better now than to get her hopes up, but she thought of Arya, and she wondered if it could be true. Maybe Arya had found her way to Riverrun and now was returning with Brienne and The Blackfish. They were the only two people of importance that Sansa could imagine Brienne finding there.

Lord Baelish would not find Arya so easy to control. Sansa hid her true feelings from him because she knew too much of him and too little of his power to risk standing openly against him. Arya had never had much use for those kinds of games. She would tell him exactly what she thought of him. She certainly wouldn’t trust him. Maybe it would be enough to stop Lord Baelish from maneuvering against Jon the way he was plainly attempting to do. Maybe Arya would even annoy him enough to get him to go back to the Vale where he belonged.

Sansa took the scroll from within the deep pocket of her cloak and read the letter from Brienne again, smiling as her fingers brushed over the letters formed by Brienne’s neat hand, ever-correct even when she had clearly written quickly. When Arya was back, maybe things would start to feel like home again.

She looked down and saw that Jon had finally spotted her. He looked concerned again. She worried him with her silences and her habit of disappearing to herself for long stretches of time. She raised her hand in greeting and smiled to calm him, and he returned the gesture before turning his attention back to Davos.

The scroll went back into her pocket. She hadn’t yet mentioned it to him. She didn’t want to get his hopes up. And perhaps there was a bit of selfishness to it.

She only had a few days left to be the sister Jon loved. The sister Jon would do anything to protect. Things would be different when Arya came back. Arya had always been Jon’s favorite.

Chapter Text

“Jaime,” she begged, but Jaime only stared at her. Oathkeeper gleamed in his left hand. He had taken it from her.

He wore his rotting right hand around his neck, and his hair was lank and unwashed, and his eyes were red from weeping. “Jaime, please. Come with me.”

Jaime didn’t move. He wanted to. She could see him struggle. His expression was beseeching. His eyes…

But he didn’t take a step towards her, and she continued to back away. Her own strides, even moving backward, were long, every one exaggerated, and soon she was too far for him to catch up even if he tried. He was fading. Her legs refused to stop. Please. Don’t leave me. Was that his voice, or her own?

She woke, then, and she pushed her crimson blanket away. It had grown colder the further north they traveled, and with the cold came the dreams. Unsettled, restless dreams of Jaime and his golden twin, or Jaime losing his hand, or Jaime falling from his horse, weak from infection. She’d had enough of dreams of Jaime. She didn’t want them anymore.

She stood and walked to the fire. The Blackfish, on watch, nodded in greeting when he saw her approach. He had been awake all night, yet he showed no signs of his fatigue, as upright and stoic as ever. He was an easy man to admire. Recognizing her intent to take the watch from him, he took himself to his own bedroll.

Podrick slept not far away, and she could make out the unruly tangle of Robb’s curls half buried beneath a blanket. She worried for him, the same way she had worried for Sansa at first, when Sansa was at her weakest and most frightened. Sansa had grown stronger the greater their distance from Winterfell and Ramsay Bolton, but with Robb it seemed the nearness to his family’s home gave him strength. Still, they had been riding hard, and he was often pale and fatigued.

Wolves howled in the distance, but they were a long ways off, and there were easier targets out there. She wasn’t worried about them. The wood from their campfire crackled, and Brienne threw more on. The heat that swelled and rolled over her face finally banished the last of that dream. It would cling to her when the morning came, she knew, but it would be easier to deal with in the light of day.

She pulled her hands from her gloves to warm them by the heat of the fire, and she laid her sword across her lap to look at it. She liked the way the colors in it rippled in the firelight. She had never seen a sword like Oathkeeper. It was special even beyond the fact that it would always be special to her. It was Ned Stark’s sword, melted down by his enemies and given away by one of them. An enemy turned reluctant friend. Now it was sworn to his house, to defend his daughter. It was the stuff of stories. Jaime had made her a knight from a tale with his gift. She wondered if he realized that.

Oathkeeper had glittered just like this when she had drawn it in the tunnel beneath Riverrun. The torches had caught the red in the rubies and in the blade just as easily as they had caught the look of incomprehension and betrayal that flickered across Jaime’s face.

It’s yours, he had said, in his tent. It will always be yours.

Would he have said those words if he knew how quickly she would draw her sword against him?

He had no right to be so surprised. He had no right to look at her as if she was the one betraying an oath. She had made no promises to Ser Jaime. She had sworn no service to his family. He had to know what she would do when faced with a choice.

Why had he looked at her like that?

How dare he look at her like that? Like his heart was the one in danger of breaking.

She could only be grateful now, so many days removed from him, that he had not fully drawn his sword nor tried to fight past her. The oath she swore to Lady Catelyn was for her daughters, but Brienne would defend Robb all the same. It wouldn’t be a choice. It couldn’t be a choice, if she wanted to uphold her honor.

Hers, and Ser Jaime’s as well. Whether he cared about his honor anymore or not.

You love him, Cersei had said once, and she had been right. Brienne could acknowledge it on occasion, and sitting by a lonely campfire was the perfect time for it. Yes, she loved Jaime. Ser Jaime. The honorable man she knew he wanted to be. But she could not turn away and ignore the dishonorable things he continued to do for his sister.

It was one thing to do bad things when you had no other recourse, or when you believed you were doing good. But she had seen the defeat in Jaime’s eyes in that tent. She knew of the admiration he had for the Tullys, and she knew the disdain he had for the Freys, and yet he took Riverrun from the former and gifted it straight into the grasping claws of the latter. He could claim to hate it as much as he wished; he had still done it. In the name of his family, in the name of the beautiful sister he loved, he had done it.

And even as he knew he could not win against Brienne with his left hand, and even as he knew that she would be compelled to fight him, he still had considered it. Drawing his sword against her for the Freys, of all people.

No, he deserved more credit than that. Or perhaps less, if she looked at it another way. Nothing had been done for the Freys. It was all for his sister, whatever he did. No matter what he wanted, no matter what his honor told him to do, it would always pale beside the ambitions of his family. She knew he had no real care for the political maneuverings of the great houses. On the road back to Kings Landing from Harrenhal, when she had grieved the loss of Lady Catelyn, he had spoken at length about how foolish they all were. “Even my father,” he had said one night, as they lay in their bedrolls, side by side, looking up at the stars. A pause. “Even Cersei. Killing each other for power and making enemies of houses who will one day rise high enough to take revenge. It’s endless. It’s madness. A cycle of men killing other men, and for what? An uncomfortable chair and a heavy crown.”

No, Jaime didn’t care about the Freys, and he didn’t care about the person that sat on the throne except as it related to whatever his sister wanted. He would give Cersei anything she wished. For her love, he would do anything.

Brienne used to think of love as something that strengthened your resolve. When she fell in love with Renly, she followed him and fought for him. She learned to ignore the taunts and jeers of the men around her. Her spine grew straighter. Her purpose never wavered. Loving Jaime gave her the strength to endure whatever she had to so that she could get him his honor back and rescue the Stark girls.

But this? Jaime’s love for his sister had turned him weak. He wasn’t a true knight. He wasn’t protecting the innocent. He wasn’t defending those who couldn’t defend themselves. He was protecting Cersei, who was hurting the innocent and killing the defenseless. And in protecting Cersei, he was protecting himself. For love. She’d never thought of love as selfish before, but it was, wasn’t it? Maybe she was just a fool who had only ever loved selflessly, without hope of reciprocation. Maybe someone less ugly, less mannish, would have turned it into something else. For her, love had always meant something different than what it seemed to mean to Jaime.

She supposed she was lucky she had sworn herself to a good house. The Starks never asked dishonor of her. They were fighting against monstrous men for their home and for their people. Lady Catelyn had only wanted her family to be safe, and Lady Sansa wanted the same, and they weren’t resorting to tricks and betrayals of honorable people to do it. If she had sworn herself into Jaime’s service, what would she do now? What would she do when she saw him losing his way? Losing himself, the honorable man she had found beneath the Kingslayer when his sword hand was stripped from him and his mind fractured in the immediate aftermath? What would she do if she was now by his side, returning to Kings Landing triumphant, having stolen the lands of a great house to reward the shameful betrayal by a lesser one?

She liked to believe that she would have the strength to stand against him. She liked to believe that she would see his madness for his sister and would walk away. Find some other lord or lady to swear to. Stop him, perhaps, if she could. But it was impossible to say. Loving him afar was easy enough, because she could forget the parts of him that she wished were different. Loving him from up close might be harder, but it could be that it would be even easier, and the difficulty would be in leaving.

Jaime had made such a choice once. He had been strong enough, as little more than a boy, to do what grown men had been too afraid to. He had killed the Mad King, forsaking the vows he had sworn, which would have stopped him from saving the city. Brienne loved him for that. She loved him for following her into the bear pit when he had to know he had no chance. When he was strong and chose to fight for the innocent. When he could turn aside from his family and do what was right. She loved him then. She supposed she must love the rest of him, the darkness and the weakness and the choices she could not swallow, but she could not respect those parts of him, and she could not defend the choices that those parts of him made. Not when he was not strong enough to want to defend himself.

Defeat. That was what the look had been when he saw her draw her sword. Defeat. Not apology. He knew that his choices had led them to that awful place, and perhaps he did regret. But it was acceptance more than it was remorse. He understood that he had earned her scorn, and he did nothing to change it or reassure her or beg her to see his side of things.

Could he still be honorable? Could an honorable man do dishonorable things, even if he knew them to be dishonorable, and survive with his honor intact? She didn’t know. It was a question too big for her. It was a question she was still too close to, for love of him.

It has never been rational, she told herself. Feeling anything for him. You always knew that it would come to nothing, and that is exactly what has happened. You’re lucky he didn’t draw his sword and make you strike him down. Knowing that doesn’t mean that you can’t love him anyway. You can love him and also mourn the man he could have been.

Robb stirred eventually, and he joined her by the fire. His cheek was red from where he had been resting it on the pack he was using as a pillow. He looked younger. Almost like a child. She couldn’t help but think of Lady Catelyn. Her fierce mother’s heart. The strength she had that was so unlike any kind of strength that Brienne had ever known. Robb was not so much younger than Brienne, but she felt the same motherly impulses for him that she felt for Sansa and for Podrick both. That she had felt for Arya when she saw her, however fleetingly. She wanted to keep him safe the way that Lady Catelyn had wanted to keep him safe. What could her own heart’s foolish desires mean when stacked against that kind of love?

Jaime would never love her. We don’t get to choose who we love, he had said. Many of the things he had said to her on the road to Kings Landing were cruel or unfair, but those words had been neither. She had not chosen to love Renly, and she had not chosen to love Jaime, just as Jaime hadn’t chosen to love his sister. Love had crept up within them. It wasn’t a choice.

But she could choose what to do with that love. She could choose what form that love took. She could choose to honor Jaime’s oaths to Lady Catelyn even if Jaime would not. To tend to his honor when he failed to do it for himself. When people asked her where she got her sword, she would say with pride that Ser Jaime Lannister had given it to her for the express purpose of protecting the daughters of Catelyn Stark, and people would know that no matter what else Jaime was, he was capable of doing the honorable thing. That was a form of love. It wasn’t love like she had dreamed of as a girl, but it was all the love she had been given, and it was something. She could love him and wish he was more deserving of it at the same time.

“Not too many days left,” Robb said. His voice was hoarse. Brienne put her sword away, and she packed her thoughts of Jaime away with it.

“No,” she said. “We aren’t far from Winterfell at all.”

Chapter Text

Robb tried to convince himself in the final days on the road that he was eager to reach Winterfell, but it wasn’t working.

He could fool his uncle, and he thought he could fool Brienne and Podrick as well, but he couldn’t fool himself into thinking that he felt anything but terror at the thought of seeing home again.

Not anything but terror. That wasn’t fair. He longed for it. For the familiar walls and for the familiar faces that should greet him there. But it wouldn’t be familiar, and that was the problem. It would be changed, diminished. Newly host to a battle that must have wrought destruction, and so many horrible things had befallen it since last he was there. Every change would be a mark of his failure. Every missing face. Every bitter look in every downturned eye. How could they not hate him? How could he just return home and pretend like his choices had not led to their suffering?

The longer their party lingered in inn common rooms over sparse vegetable broths, the more they heard about the battle. Weary survivors were heading south to spread the word, or they were fleeing the wildlings who had been allowed past the wall under Jon’s direction. Those who were leaving had little good to say about the Starks and their armies, and Robb hated to listen to them, but he knew that the truth was likely somewhere in their bitter words. People spoke often about Jon, and about how he fought like a beast more than like a man, and how he beat the Bastard of Bolton to death, or perhaps flayed him alive, or perhaps fed him to his direwolf, all as revenge for the way Bolton treated his sister. They talked about Sansa, the pale northern beauty with her cold eyes and colder heart, her sweetness turned to stone after all she had suffered. Riding into battle with an army from the Vale, rescuing the survivors of Jon’s wildling force. As they got closer, the people in the inn common rooms became loyal northerners, and they spoke and sang and laughed about how the Starks had reclaimed their family home in their dead brother’s name, and how they avenged the deaths at the Red Wedding, and how they faced impossible odds and yet refused to run.

They had done it. They had faced those impossible things, and they had triumphed. But how could they possibly face him?

They had only been made to fight because he had failed to do it. They suffered what they suffered because he had failed to help them. Jon had done the impossible, and Sansa brought an army to support him, and now Robb would return, this failed king who had lost their war the first time because he was selfish enough to choose love above all else.

Perhaps Brienne was right when she said that the northern lords would want him back on the throne, but Robb thought it was more likely that they would sneer and order him banished to the Wall for his part in the destruction of their houses and the deaths of their sons. All those people who rode to war for him who died when he put his heart before his honor.

No, he could not look forward to seeing his home again.

They were waiting, he and Brienne, as Podrick and Brynden scouted ahead to make certain that the road was clear. Brienne’s hand was on her sword, gripping the lion’s head pommel that Robb found himself examining again. He looked up from it and saw that Brienne was watching him instead of the road.

“It was your father’s sword,” she said.

She spoke with a great effort of steadiness that couldn’t hide the way her hand tightened. Robb looked back down at the sword. There was nothing left of Ice. If she hadn’t told him…

“My father’s sword was twice its size, if not more,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he argued. She wouldn’t tell him that if it wasn’t true, especially since she looked so frightened that he might snatch the thing away from her. She would give it to him, he thought. It would break her heart, but she would do it, if he demanded it.

“Tywin Lannister had it melted down,” she said.

“Of course he did,” Robb replied, because Tywin Lannister would. It wouldn’t be enough to kill Ned Stark and destroy his house. Tywin probably relished in melting down the Stark legacy. Everyone knew the tales about him. How he dealt with slights made against him, both real and imagined.

“Ser Jaime told me that his father spent half his life trying to buy a Valyrian steel sword off of one of the other houses. He was refused at every turn. No one would give one up to him. So he melted your father’s sword down, and he made two blades. One, he gave to Joffrey. I don’t know what became of it. The other, he gave to Ser Jaime. And Ser Jaime gave it to me. He told me to defend Ned Stark’s daughters with Ned Stark’s sword.” She looked at him as if she wanted him to understand something. Her eyes were very nearly pleading with him.

“I was thinking of divided loyalties,” he said. Her expression remained steady, but he knew he wasn’t imagining the tension. “At Riverrun, you were tested.”

She waited. She looked at him like she expected him to say something more, but he didn’t.

“Perhaps,” she admitted, and her tone made it sound like yes.

“Whatever happened to you when my mother set you loose, it must have been…” He found he didn’t quite know how to continue that sentence, but Brienne nodded.

“It was,” she said. He wanted to ask. He supposed he wanted to understand. Perhaps the root of it was that he wanted to know how a man like the Kingslayer could be anything to a woman as honorable as he believed Brienne to be. Not because he thought it so horrid, though from her expression that was exactly what she feared. Really, it was selfish. How had she looked past all of the Kingslayer’s sins? How had she formed anything but animosity for him? His sins were maybe not nearly so bad as the Kingslayer’s, but they were bad enough, and he wanted to understand.

“You care for him,” he said. “Despite everything.”

“Yes,” Brienne answered. “I won’t deny that he has done monstrous things. But…he made his choices for love, and though they may have been the wrong ones, they weren’t made with an evil heart.” She must have found that he looked still unconvinced, because she looked away. Her jaw tightened. She continued, slightly more firm, slightly wary, with, “I don’t expect anyone in your family to understand the regard I have for Ser Jaime. But I assure you that my loyalties aren’t divided. I swore an oath to your mother, and I swore an oath to your sister.”

“I think you mistake me,” Robb said with a small smile. “If I wonder at your choices, it’s only because I made the wrong ones, myself.”

Brienne’s look in his direction was sudden, sharp. He wondered if Sansa knew how to read her expressions any easier than he did. Or did the Kingslayer perhaps have that skill? Jaime Lannister’s pain had been simple to read when Brienne faced him in the tunnel beneath Riverrun. Had The Kingslayer read her intentions? Had he been able to see the small shifts, the trembles at the corners of her mouth and the way her eyes always darted when she was uncertain? To Robb, she was almost a mystery still.

“You made a mistake,” she said finally. He didn’t need to understand her to know that she was just being kind. He laughed quietly, and she looked away again.

“I lost a war,” he said. “Because I followed my heart instead of my mind. And you…”

She didn’t meet his eyes. Her hand was still wrapped around the sword.

“I did my duty,” she said.

“And you would have done more,” he replied.

“He is your enemy. I would think you would have no problem with my choices.”

“I don’t. I admire your ability to make them.”

That seemed to displease her more than anything else. She squeezed her eyes shut. He could see her absorbing the blow as if it pained her.

“Your mistake was not in loving her,” she managed. “Nor was it your choice. Your mistake was in choosing to break the alliance for the sake of that love. And it wouldn’t be the same. I don’t…I admire Ser Jaime. I know he is more than what the world has painted him as. But I admired your mother as well. I admire your sister. It isn’t the same as the choice you made. It isn’t even a choice. Lannister or Stark. There isn’t a choice for me. Even if I had sworn myself to Ser Jaime instead of your mother, I wouldn’t be able to support the queen. Her cruelty and her quest for power. I could not serve her. It isn’t about vows and honor. And it isn’t about love. It’s about doing what’s right despite whatever you feel about it.”

“I didn’t do that, either,” he pointed out, because she was talking around the thing he realized he selfishly wanted her to say. His uncle had been too careful with him since the wedding, and Robb hated it. Treating him as if he was fragile, as if he had a bad thing done to him. As if Robb couldn’t see the disgust and frustration behind Brynden’s eyes every time he looked at him and saw his beloved dead niece, killed because Robb was too great a fool to trust his mother’s judgement.

“No,” Brienne admitted, finally. Just as he had wanted. She seemed annoyed to have been forced to say it, but this time when she met his eyes, she didn’t look away. “You didn’t. And you can’t change that. You just have to choose correctly next time.”

She was defiant, and she stared at him, daring him to argue with her, or to ask another question. No, he thought, satisfied. She doesn’t like me at all. He found himself liking her all the more for it, for the prickliness that she couldn’t hide and for the blame that she plainly wished she could. She couldn’t help but be honest. He supposed he could understand how a man like the Kingslayer would find himself attached to a woman like Brienne. After being among his family of snakes and schemers, Brienne must have been refreshing. She was so unlike the Lannisters. She was unlike anyone Robb had ever met. He understood now why his mother had trusted her with the things she had.

Brynden whistled from ahead, and Brienne led her horse back into the road with another reproachful look for Robb. He followed without complaint, and without further conversation. He wondered what it must be like, to be the kind of woman who believed so strongly in doing the right thing that she was willing to draw her sword against a man she plainly loved. To sacrifice something so vital because she believed in the importance of a vow sworn for the right reasons. What must it have been like to have that conviction?

Lonely, perhaps. But better to be lonely than to make the kinds of mistakes Robb had.

Chapter Text

It was maddening, in hindsight, that he and Brienne had left things the way they had. It ate away at him as he rode. Sending her the horses and provisions and his own bloody blankets had been a gesture, perhaps an apology of a sort, but he still wasn’t sure how it would be received. Would it be enough? Would she understand?

Even just seeing her had been more of a jolt to his system than he had expected.

There was so much about her that was exactly the same as it used to be. She was different, in an odd way that he found he liked; more sure of herself, less eager to hide herself away. She had grown into her armor in a way that made her look more comfortable with her height and the breadth of her shoulders and her unladylike mannerisms. He liked seeing her. She looked well enough to set his mind at ease; he had worried for her, when she was gone so long without any word.

It was painful all the same. He found her to be a bitter reminder of the worst of his failings. He had been so sure that he could change. After she had returned him to Kings Landing, after she left and promised to find some of his lost honor, he thought…well. He hardly knew what he thought. But whatever it was, it certainly hadn’t happened. He had failed at that, too. Whatever conviction he had had, it had bled away.

He had lost sight of it. He wasn’t sure when. Sometime after his father’s death and Tyrion’s escape and Cersei’s threats and the wearing down of that restless sense of purpose that his journey with Brienne had given him. A flare of feeling, of wanting to be better and more than he had resigned himself to being. But a few softnesses from his sister. A few promises of fidelity and forever and reminders that they were meant to be together, and wasn’t it easier to be the man his sister wanted him to be? More difficult than it used to be, like trying to wear the wrong man’s armor, but he still knew how to be that man better than he knew how to be any other.

He was the brother Cersei wanted, and she was the sister he loved, and he could close his eyes to anything, because she was what mattered. Seeing Brienne shouldn’t have changed that, and yet it had.

Brienne had believed in that better man, too. It was clear from the way she spoke to him that she still did. Despite everything.

How could she?

Every night on the road back home, as he lay in his tent or beneath the stars or in whatever bed an inn could spare, he remembered the way she had looked at him when she drew her sword in that tunnel beneath Riverrun. Her eyes had been too sincere. They exposed everything for him to see and understand and hate himself for forcing her into that position. If there had been more time, if they had been alone…

He would have wanted to explain to her. Not that the explanation would have made it any better. Actually, it might have made things worse. Brienne would have looked at him in silent judgement as he tried to find a way to justify why he was still supporting Cersei when they both knew that his sister’s goals were not what he would have chosen. What could he have said that would have made Brienne understand? Nothing. Even if Brienne hadn’t sworn to protect the Starks, she never would have seen him as anything but monstrous for trying to stand in her way.

She would have killed me, he thought almost every night. And she would have been right to do it.

Maybe it would have been worse if they were alone in that tunnel, but she had seemed to understand him when they were in his tent. He had been too great a fool to speak plainly to her, and he knew she wouldn’t know what to make of it if he had, but she had met his gaze and spoke to him with that new, unfamiliar confidence, only slightly dimmed by her obvious fear to stand against him, and an understanding had passed between them.

If things were different. If this war was over.

Well, but it was hardly fair of him to despair of a war when his impulsive cruelties were what had caused it. And it wouldn’t matter, anyway. There would still be Cersei when the wars were done.

Cersei. He tried to tell himself he was breathing easier the closer they got to Kings Landing. Things would be different now. Cersei had promised him.

They were three days out from Kings Landing when they heard the news.

The Sept of Baelor was a crater. Queen Margaery and her brother Loras and their father had all been killed, along with the majority of the nobility in Kings Landing. Tommen...

Tommen.

“Are you sure?” he asked Bronn, who had been the only man brave enough to deliver the news. The rest who had been riding with them had judiciously disappeared from the inn’s common room by the time Jaime entered to find Bronn waiting. Perhaps they expected him to reveal too much of himself. Perhaps they avoided the common room so they could continue to pretend they didn’t believe the rumors that Stannis Baratheon had spread. A normal father would probably show some emotion, wouldn’t he? To hear that his only surviving child had died? Jaime still didn’t dare. He tucked himself away, instead.

“The lad who passed on the news wasn’t lying,” Bronn said. Not even the most generous man would call Bronn’s expression sympathetic, but it was sympathetic for him. It only made Jaime feel worse. He left, though he hardly knew where he planned to go.

He found himself outside, in a small copse of trees just beyond the inn. His men were camped out in the yard and beyond, but none of them were near enough to hear his heavy breathing and the panic that this revelation had brought. I should be crying, he thought. A normal father would cry. He couldn’t. He had cried with Myrcella in his arms, but Tommen…was it possible? It didn’t seem possible.

Cersei wouldn’t, said an old impulse in his mind. She would never. She loves her children. She loves her son. She loves me.

But did she love any of them more than she loved her freedom? Her power? Would that love be enough to make up for the fact that the High Sparrow and the Tyrells had her backed into a corner, frightened and humiliated and furious?

Could she be so hard-hearted in her thirst for revenge that she would risk their son’s life?

No. She must not have intended it. He could not believe that she had intended it.

He and Bronn rode through the night, and then the following day. They traded horses at an inn, and Bronn didn’t bitch even once about needing to rest. Perhaps he had been about to, when they heard from the innkeeper exactly how the king had died. He didn’t say anything, then. Only followed Jaime until they reached Kings Landing.

Smoke still hung over the city, and Jaime wondered if his sister had smiled the way Aerys used to when she saw the green of the wildfire igniting and taking out all of her enemies at once. Never mind that her actions would make them a million more. Never mind that their son leapt from his window in horror at what had happened. Did Cersei smile at that green-lit moment? Had she thought herself the victor?

She wasn’t smiling on the throne. He entered as she was crowned. It was a somber, dark affair. She saw him somehow in the back of the room, and she met his eyes with a cold defiance.

She seemed unsurprised to find him waiting for her when she entered her room afterward. He was ready to fight her if she tried to protest his presence for propriety’s sake. She didn’t say anything. She poured herself a glass of wine. She was still wearing her crown.

“You took long enough,” she finally said. Her voice was too airy. Unconcerned. A brave face, and a blank one. He could not tell what she was feeling. It frightened him. She looked him over with distaste. Dirt still clung to him from the road. “I hear the Blackfish escaped.”

“Uncle Kevan was in the Sept,” Jaime said. Cersei raised her eyes to meet his. Her jaw ticked with tension. She was afraid of him too, he realized. She had believed that she would either find him compliant or murderous, and murderous was what she saw now. He had instantly made himself into another obstacle for her. She loves you? his inner voice wondered. Are you sure?  

“I warned him not to stand in my way,” she said. Jaime’s stump ached, and his head pounded, and he had ridden for days without sleep to be here, to see it for himself, and he found her as beautiful and as immovable as marble.

“The Tyrells will stand against us now,” he said.

“An old woman and an army of green boys. Do you think father would quail in fear at the thought of them?”

“Father knew that not every war is won on the battlefield. Olenna Tyrell…”

“Will stay in her rose garden if she knows what’s good for her. I have already taken her heirs. I can take so much more. The vengeful bitch should have known not to underestimate another queen, and yet here we are.” Cersei drank, but he saw the way her hands trembled. She was still afraid. She didn’t turn her back to him, as she so often did while talking to him. Dismissing his worst concerns with a physical turning away, because she knew it hurt him.

No, she didn’t trust him enough to turn her back on him now. Him. After all he had done for her, she thought…

She thinks you’re strong enough to make the right choice. She has no idea that you’re too weak.

“Our son is dead,” Jaime said.

Cersei’s mask slipped. Not very much. It never did when she was convinced that she had to hide. But he saw the cracks in it, and he saw the way she had to make an effort to smooth it over and make it blank again. She took another sip of wine.

“Tommen made too many mistakes, and he found he could not live with them,” she said. Jaime stood and went to her, needing to see her face more closely. Needing to understand something.

“Tommen was a child, and the mistakes were yours,” he said. Cersei didn’t flinch or back away, just tilted her chin up higher, her eyes flashing at him. Green and furious. “Wildfire, Cersei?”

She didn’t know, of course, of how he woke sometimes in the night in a cold sweat, the Mad King’s laughter echoing, following him from his dreams. She didn’t know because he had never told her. Never told anyone but Brienne, because he had, in his illness and weakness and wretchedness, needed Brienne to understand. Cersei…perhaps he never gave her enough credit. Perhaps she would have understood, but Jaime still doubted it. She had never asked, because she had never wanted to know. She had been happy he killed the king and made way for her to be Robert’s queen. To her, that was the right thing to do. Securing the throne for the Lannisters. She would not have cared to hear about the reasons that truly drove him.

 If he told her about Aerys and wildfire now, she would see it as a threat, because it would be meant as one. A reminder that he had killed a king before. He could never kill Cersei, but there were other ways to remove a queen from power, and he would do it if she proved as mad as Aerys had been.

“Thank Tyrion,” she said. “He was the one who gave me the idea. The little imp was good for something after all. You should have seen the way it glowed.” She smiled, knowing from his shifting expression that he was disgusted, and perhaps afraid. “Well?” The wine had made her reckless, or perhaps it was something else. The headiness of growing power. The slow realization that he wasn’t going to stop her. “You stand there disapproving like an old septa, but what are you going to do about it?” She waited. Her confidence was growing. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She tilted her head further back, exposing her throat. A parody of an animal gesture of trust. She didn’t trust him. She knew exactly what he was thinking of her. She also knew that he wouldn’t harm her. That wasn’t trust. That was an awareness of his weaknesses. “Go on. Tell me again how our son’s death is my fault. Tell me that I’m not fit to rule. Take the crown from my head and sit on my throne the way you have always longed to do.”

“You’re a fool, Cersei,” he told her. His voice croaked.

“A queen,” she reminded him. “Even father never managed to be king.”

She turned away from him at last, and she finished the wine in her goblet. Her hands didn’t shake anymore. She knew now that she had won. Jaime was the one left shaken. His knees felt unsteady. His only hand was weak. He still had it curled into a fist at his side. He watched her walk away and there was despair in his chest. He wanted to call out to her. Condemn her. Beg her to listen to reason.

She turned over her shoulder to look at him, and her smile grew when she saw him standing exactly where she had left him. Yes, she knew she had won. She knew that he couldn’t harm her, and she knew that he wasn’t strong enough to leave her. Where would he even go? Find Tyrion somewhere across the Narrow Sea and join him wallowing in whatever whorehouse he had chosen for drowning his sorrows? Head North to Winterfell to see Brienne again before losing his head to a Stark sword? No. Cersei was his sister. His twin. He loved her still, even if he no longer understood why.

He had felt this with Aerys, too. This suffocation. This lack of other options. With Aerys, he found salvation with a sword through the Mad King’s back, but he wouldn’t find that here. Not with Cersei. If he killed her, it would be his ruin.

Still, the old methods would work the way they always had. He could not see a way to stop this, not yet, but he could find a way to live with it. Go away inside. Think of better things. A swordfight with a warrior maiden on a bridge by a stream.

“The Starks have taken back the north,” Cersei was saying. “But they have lost most of their army. Qyburn’s little birds are already looking for numbers. They shouldn’t bother us, at any rate. For all your bleating about enemies, we are secure for the time being.”

She was talking still, but Jaime wasn’t there. He had two hands, and Brienne was snarling at him behind her sword. What a fight that had been! His last fight when he was whole.

He looked out at Cersei’s balcony and saw the still-smoldering wreckage of the Sept. Yes, that was where she had stood and watched it. That was where she had sipped her wine and smiled. He could see it so easily. He almost understood Tommen’s choice.

Had Brienne made it back north in time for that battle Cersei had mentioned? He hoped that she hadn’t.

Please, at least let her be alive. I have nothing else to ask for.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t that Jon was never in a good mood. It was just that good moods made him suspicious. They seldom lasted very long, so what else was he to do but prepare for them to end? Sansa always teased him for it and called him grim and solemn, but he couldn’t help it. Besides, shouldn’t a king be those things? He only ever met one king who was at all disposed to smiling and mirth, and Robert Baratheon wasn’t a very good example of what a king should be. Kingliness seemed like it should be hand-in-hand with sobriety. Or at least some form of sobriety.

On that particular morning, Jon fortuitously found himself wondering what Robb had been like when he was king. Robb had always been the least serious of the Stark boys. Arya was perhaps less serious, but only just. Robb had always gotten along well with Theon, wanting to be like him, always laughing and irreverent. Jon forever felt awkward and too serious beside them. Robb could make him laugh, and could break him out of that seriousness sometimes, but Jon could never keep it up. Robb was brighter. Faster. Funnier. Stronger.

Robb was the heir, and Jon the bastard.

Robb had been everything that Jon wasn’t, and even now Jon felt his brother’s ghost in the halls of Winterfell. Was he comporting himself the same way Robb had when he was king? Or had Robb laughed with his men and made them love him by virtue of being the same mischievous, clever boy he always had been? When Jon was at the Wall, hearing of Robb’s victories only weeks after they happened, they always felt like Robb. Outwitting more experienced men by doing things that only a green boy would believe could succeed. As months went by in the Watch, Jon found himself wishing he could speak to Robb. Just for an hour or two. Just long enough so that he could get his brother’s advice. As he rose in the ranks and proved himself despite all the older men who thought they knew better, he wanted to know how his brother had managed to keep his people happy and loyal.

Now he found himself wondering what his brother would say about this. Jon Snow, the Bastard of Winterfell. King of the North. When they were younger, and they played at swords and heroes, Robb was never slow to remind Jon that he would never be the Lord of Winterfell. Not in a way that felt cruel, but in a way that was simply stated, without artifice. It was just a fact. It was just the way things were. Robb would be the Lord, and Jon would be something else.

Jon had tried before to talk about it with Sansa, but Sansa hadn’t understood. She had rushed to reassure him. She told him that he was good at ruling. She told him that she trusted him. She affirmed that they were family. They were all things that Jon liked to hear, but they also weren’t exactly what he had needed.

Sansa never wanted to talk about things critically, and it made him think of Sam sometimes. Sam was always about reassurances, too, because reassurances were what Sam wanted when he was upset about something or doubtful about something. Jon didn’t need that. He needed the criticism and he needed someone to point out the mistakes he might be making. Sansa did that sometimes, but always so delicately, lately. He wished she wouldn’t be so careful with him.

There was so much more that he could be doing. He was trying his best to rebuild their home and reassure the lords that he would be a good king, but it wasn’t enough. Not enough for Sansa, certainly, but more than that: not enough for his people. Why had they chosen him? Why had Lyanna Mormont raised her voice for him? And why had he taken the crown at all when the crown was the last thing he wanted? He didn’t want to be Robb. He didn’t want to be Lord of Winterfell. He never had.

Not aloud, anyway. Not where anyone could see it. And certainly not like this.

And besides. He was a man who had died and came back to life again. He still wasn’t sure what that meant. He still wasn’t sure if he had come back right. His body had healed, leaving only scars behind, but he could still feel it sometimes, those knives and the betrayal that came hand-in-hand with the pain when they entered him. He could still feel the crushing blankness of after.

He put it aside. Pushed it away. That was all he knew how to do with it. He would start to despair if he thought about it too long.

Davos found him in the hall and updated him on the status of the men Jon sent to the Dreadfort. It had been retaken for the north, and now he only needed to choose which loyal vassal of House Stark would receive the Bolton stronghold as a prize.

“I’ll need to discuss it with Sansa,” he said, as he always did, and Davos nodded. Jon had been relieved to find that Davos valued Sansa’s advice almost as much as he himself did. Davos was a stranger to the north, still, and though he had given good counsel, and though he understood the way men thought in a way only a smuggler with experience could, the more subtle politics like choosing which house to show favor to were still lost on him.

If Jon could stomach asking Lord Baelish for anything, it was possible that Littlefinger would also be a good person to ask, but Jon found it best practice to avoid being in Baelish’s presence as much as possible. Both because of Sansa’s warnings and because he simply couldn’t stand the man.

He left Davos and headed for Sansa’s chambers. She was usually in their father’s old solar during the day, working on whatever dress or cloak or stitching she had been doing, taking time to write letters or receive letters that she might choose to share with him later. Most of the time, Sansa was a mystery.  Davos had asked him more than once if Jon didn’t fear his sister’s closeness with Littlefinger, and Jon had answered immediately in the negative, but that had been a lie.

Of course Jon feared it. Jon feared that he was just a fool, being swindled for love of his sister. She’d been with Littlefinger in the Vale, and he was one of the most renowned schemers in the world. Would it be so surprising for Littlefinger to use Sansa to take Winterfell back by appealing to Jon’s brotherly nature? Taking him down from where she sat beside him? Looking at it from the outside, it certainly made more sense than Sansa suddenly finding room in her heart for the bastard brother she had never cared for. But he trusted her, and he would continue to trust her. Sansa had always been nearly as much an outsider to the Stark siblings as Jon—her by choice, he by circumstance—but they needed each other now, and Jon refused to believe that she was any less happy than he was about being back together.

The alternative to trusting Sansa would be planning for the worst and plotting against her, and Jon didn’t think he had the heart for that. Whatever would happen would happen, and he trusted Sansa to handle Littlefinger, and he trusted her when she said that he could not.

They had to trust each other. They were all that was left.

When he knocked on the solar door, Sansa called out that he could enter, recognizing the knock as his own. Once he was within, it took him a moment to find her. She wasn’t sitting by the fire in her usual spot, and she wasn’t standing by the desk the way she sometimes did when she was distracted by some correspondence. She was standing instead by the window, and he could see that she was tense. Her knuckles were white as she grasped the edge of the stone wall beside her.

“Sansa?” he asked, and she released it to hold her hand back to him without turning.

“Jon,” she said. “Come here. Tell me what you see.”

He went to her, and he took her grasping hand with his own, pulling it down by his side so that he could squeeze beside her in the narrow nook that held the window. It didn’t take him very long to see where she had been looking. The field outside Winterfell was white with snow, the blood from the battle finally all gone and buried beneath the recent storms, and the contrast made it impossible to miss the four shapes riding toward Winterfell.

The tallest form was easy. Brienne of Tarth cut an impressive figure, and she rode her horse the way she did anything: with a regal sort of competence that made him think of the warrior queens from the stories that Old Nan used to tell. The older man who rode beside her was unfamiliar, but Jon knew it must be The Blackfish; he couldn’t say he was eager to make the acquaintance of Lady Catelyn’s uncle.

Behind them both rode Podrick, looking little steadier on his horse than he had been when he left, poor lad. And beside him…

The fourth rider was bundled in a fur cloak against the cold. Jon could see that it was the one that Sansa made for Brienne, and it was large enough to obscure most of the man’s features, but not the hair, and not the shape.

It had been so long. Long enough to forget some things. Long enough to make him doubt.

Long enough, yes, and it’s also impossible, he reminded himself. Robb is dead.

Still.

“Robb,” he breathed, and Sansa’s fingers tightened on his own. He took his eyes off the man who could not be Robb, and he turned to look at her. Sansa’s gaze was already on his face. Hopeful, eyes lighting, only slightly tempered by the pragmatism that she had been forced to learn. Jon felt his heart clench for a thousand different reasons. Robb could be alive. Robb could be alive, and that was enough to make him smile for a full year. But to see Sansa show hope again. To see her not immediately dismiss a good thing as impossible, it felt…

“Can it be him?” she asked. Begging him for confirmation.

“It looks like him,” he admitted. “It looks like him. I don’t know. I can’t…”

They both laughed at once, giddy and overwhelmed, and the light in Sansa’s eyes grew even brighter, eclipsing the worry and the doubt she still wore in that little line between her brows.

“He’s alive,” she said. Her hands went to his shoulders, grasping him there. Her awe overtook her, and she shook her head. “It can’t be him. Some Tully cousin, but…no. He’s alive. It’s him.” Her hands released him, and she sent him an embarrassed smile that he had to smile back at. Her fingers went to her hair, feeling the messy braid she was only now noticing. “Oh, gods. We need to be ready to receive him. Oh, Jon. He’s alive.”

She took out her braid, and she darted to the other side of the room, slipping into her bedroom, already talking to herself about all the things they needed to do to be ready. The riders would be at the gate in mere minutes, but if there was anyone who could finish ten tasks in a timeframe better suited to three, it was Sansa. Jon waited for her in the hall outside, pacing.

The shock wore off slowly. The doubt was dashed away. And he found himself, for a moment, horribly, disgustingly torn.

He would never admit it aloud. Not for anything. But for a single moment, Robb’s return was not the sweetness that it was for Sansa.

Anyone would guess it was for the crown. Ygritte, if she lived, she would laugh at him for it. She would tell him that he was just like any other man, after all. Claiming that he didn’t want the seat and then finding that he did when it came time to give it up. But it wasn’t that. Jon didn’t care for the crown. Robb’s return was a relief, because surely the lords would want it to go back on the head of a trueborn Stark.

No. It was worse than that, maybe. Because for that instant, Jon was jealous.

Sansa adored Robb. She had her earned bitterness, Jon knew, over the fact that Robb left her in Kings Landing and didn’t try to trade Jaime Lannister for her. He had disinherited her when she was forced to marry Tyrion. He had chosen his war over his sister’s safety, and she would not so easily forgive that. But she spoke about that time now with a resigned, pragmatic edge, and she claimed to believe that those choices had been the right ones for Robb to make, even if they hurt her

Jon disagreed, but Sansa had become more practical, and he knew that she found comfort in her decision that Robb had chosen to do the right thing, even if he later chose wrong. And whatever part of Sansa’s heart still remained untouched by what had happened to her probably thought it was romantic for Robb to choose love instead of duty. Or perhaps it was just that Robb was dead, and he became something mythical in Sansa’s mind. Her older brother who used to carry her on his shoulders and pretend to be her knight every time she wanted to play. She dreamed in Kings Landing of Robb coming to save her. She had mentioned it to Jon before. She didn’t have to say that she never dreamed of him, the bastard half-brother, away at The Wall. He understood, because the sister he missed was always Arya.

It was horrible, and he loathed himself for it, but for a few moments, he felt this awful, sinking envy. With Robb back, with her favorite brother back…He had enjoyed the past few months of closeness with Sansa, even when they were fighting for their home and constantly arguing about how to do it. It felt good to argue with someone but never question their love. To be able to sit with her long into the night as she sewed or wrote or simply stared into the fire and refused to sleep, the nightmares of Ramsay’s torture following her unless he or Brienne were close by. And even once Ramsay was dead and they were back behind the walls of Winterfell, safe and uncontested, he had enjoyed continuing that. Sitting with her in the solar. Consulting with her when they had to figure out how to deal with the northern lords. He could not get enough of her fondness or her amusement or even her disapproval, because it wasn’t the indifference that she had shown him when she was a girl.

With Robb returned to her, with her favorite brother returned to her, would she once again regard Jon as the bastard half-brother that she never wanted?

It was nothing compared to his happiness that Robb was alive. Nothing compared to the hope that afterwards glittered through him when he thought of Robb’s smile and Robb’s laugh and the snowflakes that had melted in Robb’s hair when they said their goodbyes. But still it was something that squirmed in his gut. Burrowed down there, reminding him. Taunting him with the knowledge that his first thought had been such a selfish one.

Chapter Text

His heart had not stopped racing since Brienne woke him early and told him that they were less than a day’s ride from Winterfell.

He should have been pleased that they were so near the end of their journey. Perhaps he was, in a way; he was sick to death of riding. But mostly he felt terror, knowing what was waiting for him. He couldn’t imagine anything but their disappointment to find him returned to them. How was he supposed to stand before them? How was he supposed to beg their forgiveness? How was he supposed to even look at them?

He tried to rehearse apologies as they rode. Explanations, too. Like there had to be a correct combination of words that would express everything he felt, all at once. Something that would help Sansa and Jon understand that he meant to do whatever he could to rectify the pain he had caused. He had been a poor king, and arguably a worse brother, and surely there was a way to let them know that he meant to try to be a better one.

No words he thought up seemed likely to be enough. He kept recalling those dreams where Jon stood between he and the rest of his siblings, ordering him banished for his failures. A thick, unwanted feeling had settled in his chest: Jon was right, in those dreams. Why should they accept him back? Why shouldn’t they bar him from even setting foot inside Winterfell again?

Brienne and Brynden seemed to push their horses faster the further they got along the familiar road to Winterfell. Brienne was probably eager to sleep in her own bed. She had Sansa waiting for her, and her duties to get back to. Robb couldn’t fault her for it, but he found himself lagging in response. Even his horse’s steps seemed to drag.

His horse’s steps outright faltered when their traveling party left the cover of the trees and started across the open, snowy plain. It was within sight now. Winterfell.

It looked exactly as he remembered. He had been so sure that it would be half-destroyed. A smoking ruin. Some sign of its recent troubles lingering on it, like a brand of his failures. Instead, it looked like home. The flags over the battlements and the banners that trailed down the walls bore a white wolf in place of a gray one, but it was otherwise unchanged.

The air was harsh with cold and stinging in his lungs, and the recent snowfall was lush on the ground. When they drew close enough, the gates opened, and Robb found himself hunching down in his borrowed cloak, as if to hide. Brienne waited ahead of him. Her posture was impeccable. Her conscience was clear.

She chose correctly, Robb reminded himself. And you did not.

They entered the courtyard slowly, the four horses scuffing across the snow and mud. There was no one waiting to greet him. Wildling eyes, curious and unimpressed, met his. The guards watched him. There were women gathering snow from outside. There were children gathering wood to bring to the hearths within. They eyed the party, and then they looked away again, disinterested. He didn’t see a single face he recognized. New guards and new servants who wouldn’t know him.

He dismounted his horse and nodded in thanks to the stableboy who came to lead her away. Brienne led her own mare, whispering to it as she went, soothing words with a gentle smile that Robb only barely saw. Robb was left standing in the muddy courtyard, searching for the familiar red of his sister’s hair, as if he thought he had missed it.

Brynden dismounted beside him, by Robb’s side begrudgingly, the way he had been since the wedding.

“Well,” he started to say, probably something dry and sarcastic and meant to be funny, digging into the wound left by the lack of interest in Robb’s return. Brynden was a loyal man, and a loyal uncle. He just also had his anger. Robb couldn’t blame him for that.

One of the side doors to the keep opened with a rushed slam, and Brynden stopped speaking. The wood echoed hollowly against the stone, and the courtyard went quiet, attention turned toward the sound; everyone here was plainly used to the suddenness of recent chaos. Their fear was fleeting, but it was obvious.

 His sister stood just inside. Her cheeks were flushed pink. She had been running, he realized. Running to meet him.

She was taller now than she had been when Robb last saw her. Her face was sharper, the roundness of youth having been stripped away. Even her hair seemed darker. Closer now to his own auburn color. She was so different, but it was Sansa, and he still knew her.

She faltered in the doorway, seeing him watching her, and she took one tentative step out into the mud. Her dress was stiff, black and gray and tight to the throat, clasped at her neck, and it gave the impression of a suit of armor, keeping her contained. Hidden. It was nothing like what she would have worn before.

She couldn’t hide her expression, though.

It wavered, her lips trembling around the slightest smile. She pushed gently forward through the gathering crowd of curious onlookers. She didn’t speak to any of them. She didn’t look away from Robb. She glided towards him like some kind of spirit, just as delicate as he remembered from when they were children. He tried to catalogue things to slow his pounding heart. Ways she was different and ways she was the same.

She stopped when she was just a few steps away. It was impossible, for a moment. To have been so long apart and to now have only a bit of dirt between them.

He opened his mouth to speak. To apologize. One of the thousand speeches he had rehearsed and had now forgotten. But Sansa’s expression crumbled entirely, the trembling lips opening faultlines in her face. She stumbled to him, and she flung her arms around him, and suddenly he was holding her.

She was so much taller than she used to be. She was almost level with him, and her arms were strong around him. She was a woman grown, just as he was a man, and they had been such children when they saw each other last. The years seemed endless, stretched between them. But she was with him. She was with him, and alive, and holding him. Not hating him and driving him away.

“You’re home,” she whispered in his ear.

“I’m home,” he said in reply.

The scuffed boots in the dirt were next, and it turned out that the time apart meant nothing. Robb would recognize his brother’s footsteps, no matter how much or little of a brother Jon might be. He lifted his head from Sansa’s shoulder and found Jon approaching. Jon's eyes were glimmering with happy tears, and his mouth was stretched in a smile that had been nearly unfamiliar even when they were children.

Robb extended an arm to him, and Jon moved forward, and then the three of them were hugging, standing in the center of the yard, surrounded by the curious people of Winterfell. Sansa brought Robb’s head down to her shoulder again, and he knew it was because she had noticed his tears.

His family. There had been so many of them, once.

Now they three were all that was left.

The northern lords demanded a meeting as soon as they were informed of Robb’s return.

“Of course they have,” Sansa said, rather snide, when Jon mentioned it hardly a quarter of an hour after Robb had been shown into the keep. Sansa had spent most of the time speaking with Brienne in another room while Jon awkwardly communicated with his Hand, always glancing over at Robb like he thought Robb would be offended that Jon was conducting a king’s business in front of a man who had lost the crown. Then at last it was the three of them, and Robb could see how much his siblings had changed while he was away.

It was odd to see them speaking at all. They had never spent much time together as children. It was especially odd to listen to the quick rhythm they had developed. It was almost like the one that Robb had once shared with Theon. Wry and sort of amused with each other while being annoyed with everyone else. They felt like a unit, and it was not a unit he ever would have expected, and it was not a unit in which he had any place.

“They’ll want you to take the crown,” Jon said. “You’re welcome to it.”

“I don’t want it,” Robb said.

“I would take it gladly, if I thought they would give it to me,” Sansa interjected, which made Jon smile a little.

“I’d give it to you in a heartbeat,” he said. He was so much softer with her, and it reminded Robb again of the stories that had made their way to Riverrun: the tragedies that had befallen the Lady of Winterfell. Brynden had grumbled about loose tongues and only fools believing tavern tales, but some of them must have been true. Jon was too careful with her. It made Robb anxious again. Neither of them had yet mentioned the mistakes he had made. The wonder of his survival was still too fresh for that. But it wouldn’t last forever, and he apparently had much to answer for.

“The lords will never agree to name me queen while Robb still lives,” Sansa said. “But thank you, Jon.”

She looked back at Robb when she was finished smiling at Jon, and her smile faded slowly.

“They’ll choose you,” she said.

“I don’t want them to,” Robb insisted. He felt like a child again. They were in their father’s old office. It was covered in missives and books and maps pinned to the walls. There was nothing left of Ned Stark in this space. Robb’s skin prickled, uneasiness settling in him to see something so familiar turned so foreign.

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Sansa said. “A lot of them won’t be happy, but the majority will choose you. You’ll have to rule.”

“I lost them the war,” Robb said, desperate, like she was the one he was arguing with. But Sansa only shook her head. Her giddy joy to see him again had faded, and it left a hard, determined steel in its place.

“Yes, you did” she said. “But that isn’t the most important thing to them.”

Brynden was the one who stood in the meeting and suggested crowning Robb in Jon’s place. Robb would have felt more betrayed by it if he hadn’t always known that his uncle cared only for Catelyn Tully’s line. The fondness that Brynden had for Robb was nothing compared to what he had felt for his niece, and there had been a wall around Brynden’s heart since Robb had survived what Catelyn had not. Brynden seemed to like Sansa, though, which was no surprise. Actually, a lot of the older men who made up the lords' council seemed to like Sansa. Most of them treated her courteously, like a daughter or granddaughter. Petyr Baelish was different.

Littlefinger was standing at the back of the hall when Brynden raised the cry to re-crown Robb, and Robb could see that the suggestion displeased him. He knew little enough about the man, except that Jon had glowered at him earlier, and that he watched Sansa in a way that Robb didn’t like. It was enough to form an impression.

With all the northern lords bickering and shouting at each other about which of the two Stark sons had a better claim to the throne—it was Robb, obviously, but the ones who hated him for losing the war were doing a fair job of finding excuses for it to be Jon—a single shrill voice cut through the melee. A little girl, a child, stood up out of her chair. Swathed in furs, she reminded Robb of the stuffed animals his mother used to make for he and Sansa, back when she had the time because she only had two children to look after and not five.

“House Mormont stood with House Stark. We fought with House Stark. We did it because I believe in House Stark.” Robb had to struggle not to smile. He tried to remember if Arya had ever said anything with the amount of gravitas that this child spoke with. Mostly he remembered her sticking out her tongue behind Sansa’s back. “And they haven’t let us down. When Jon Snow took the throne, my men wanted me to return home, but I stayed. I knew that he was an untested king, and I wanted to be sure that I had made the right choice in supporting him. I’ve seen nothing that displeases me so far. And Lady Sansa has sat beside him. She has taken on the task of rebuilding Winterfell and preparing for the coming winter much more admirably than I thought she would. Which brings me to my point.” She drew herself up taller, smiling at the three Starks at their table. “Whichever king sits on the throne, Lady Stark will sit beside him, and the other brother will sit there too. If you fuckers want a trueborn heir, Robb Stark is your king. But the Starks will rule together. That’s the way it should be.”

Robb turned his head and met Sansa’s eyes. He arched his eyebrows, only slightly incredulous, and Sansa allowed half a smile and a chiding expression that reminded him of their mother before she turned back to address the child.

“Thank you, Lady Mormont,” she said. “And you’re right. Whichever of us is on the throne, the others will support them. In our father’s name.” She turned her head toward Brynden with a small, sad smile. “And in my mother’s. My parents ruled the north fairly for decades, and my father’s parents did the same before them. Now that we have been restored to our home, we will do everything to see that peace is brought back to the north. And when the time is right, we will defend ourselves against the claims of the south.”

Lyanna Mormont liked that. She grinned a wolfish grin and slammed her tiny fist down on the table. A child’s fist, but a woman’s enthusiasm.

The roar went up again, the lords arguing and shouting back and forth, but Lyanna Mormont sat back, satisfied that whoever was chosen, there would be no wrong answer.

In the end, Robb’s re-crowning was unceremonious. They were all too tired and too cynical to make much of a thing of it, and Robb probably would have refused to allow them to, anyway. It wasn’t the same crown he wore during his first campaign. He assumed that one had been melted down somewhere after being paraded around on the head of Grey Wind, stitched to the shoulders of whatever poor Tully soldier was mistaken for Robb in the chaos of the betrayal at the wedding.

The lords, even the ones who didn’t want Robb to be remade King, insisted on some kind of celebration, and Sansa agreed reluctantly. She and Jon exchanged a smile and a slight roll of the eyes that spoke of a joke made privately, and there was a hollowness inside Robb’s chest when he saw it. He was an outsider here, in his own home. Maybe he would always be an outsider here now.

He kept to himself during the feast as much as possible. The only people who sought to speak to him were the people who had supported him. The ones who hadn’t stayed away, looking balefully between he and Sansa and Jon as if trying to detect some resentment between the three of them. Some proof that they had been right to try and choose something else. Sansa smiled at everyone and moved calmly between groups of people. She appeared at his side often to say a few quick words of empty courtesy to whoever he happened to be speaking with. She was so like the Sansa he remembered in those moments, but it was unsettling because he knew it to be false. Her eyes were sharper than her smile, and she was always watching everyone at once, taking in threats. She reminded him of the Kingslayer, the one time Robb saw him in action on the battlefield. Handsome and golden and desperate to strike the killing blow against Robb. He had been cutting through Robb’s defenders in the Whispering Wood, and his eyes and head were constantly on alert, analyzing the fight with a faster speed than a normal man should possess. The stories about the Kingslayer always denigrated the empty-headed battle commander, walking into a trap and getting himself captured, but Robb knew better than that. The Kingslayer’s sarcasm and indolence were very carefully crafted. Sansa’s blank mask and cool politeness were the same.

He watched her as he sipped at his ale and pretended to be honored that he had been chosen to be king again. He watched her, and he watched Brienne, never far behind her. Brienne wore her concern openly, and through it, Robb began to see Sansa’s concerns. The way she carefully sidestepped any man’s attempt to dance with her. The way she tensed any time a man dared to lay a hand on her arm when they were speaking, unless that man was Jon or Brynden or Lord Royce, from the Vale. He noticed, too, the way Lord Baelish lingered on the outskirts of the dance, and he noticed the way that he watched Sansa, and the way that Sansa managed to never meet his eye.

“She’s stronger than she looks,” Jon said from beside him suddenly.

“I forgot how quiet you can be,” Robb grumbled. Jon grinned at him, but it faded quickly.

“I know you’re worried for her.”

“I have been.”

“I wish you would have sent word.” It was the only sign of censure Jon had given since Robb arrived. It was almost a relief. Robb knew that it couldn’t last, the hand-waving of his faults. He knew that eventually one of them would mention it, and then they would have to talk about it. It wasn’t that he was ready for it, but he would rather get it over with.

“I didn’t think,” he started. He tried to think of a less pathetic way to say it, but nothing came to him, so he had to admit, “I didn’t think it would do anyone any good. Having me back.”

Jon made a sound that seemed at first noncommittal, but then Robb realized it was a laugh. Quiet, wry. Jon met his eyes and gave him a head-tilted expression.

“Neither did I,” he admitted. “The Red Woman disagreed.”

“So it’s true then. That you were dead.”

“Aye,” Jon said. “Were you?”

“I don’t know,” Robb answered. “I felt like I was.”

I felt like I should have stayed that way, he didn’t say. He looked at Jon again and saw that Jon was watching Sansa with the same careful eye that Brienne had on her. For all his talk about Sansa’s strength, plainly he had the same fears Robb did. My brother, Robb thought, because it was true, no matter what else there was. Brotherhood wasn’t just a shared mother or a shared father. He knew that now. Thinking of Theon, he also had to concede that brotherhood wasn’t always forever, but Jon wasn’t Theon. Jon wasn’t Theon, and Robb could trust him with anything. He had learned not to trust so easily, but Jon was different. Jon was Jon. It was suddenly intolerable that he didn’t know the truth.

“Jon, there’s…I need to tell you something,” he said. “But not here.” 

Chapter Text

Whenever Dany dreamed of her first arrival in Westeros, she had imagined it would feel indescribable. Some song in her blood. Some quickening of her heart. Something that would give credence to a young girl’s fantasies of ruling over a land that was her birthright. Destiny. Surely destiny had a feeling. Some strong, vibrating energy that would course through her when she stepped foot on Westerosi soil at last.

She stood in the sand. She lowered her hand to touch it. Westeros. Home. Dragonstone, where she was born.

She didn’t feel anything.

Vaguely nauseas from the rocking of the sea, perhaps. Terrified. This was what she had been fighting for, and it was upon her. But it was nothing like what she had wanted.

She rose and turned to look at her people. Varys and Tyrion and Missandei and Grey Worm were all watching her, waiting for her reaction. Did they want her to feel something, too? She swallowed back her nerves. She smiled at them.

Varys was the one who led the way through the castle. Her people were already hard at work transforming it back into the Targaryen seat of old. Removing any sign of Stannis Baratheon. Dany watched the way they stripped the stag from the walls and put the dragon in its place. She wondered how quickly the Baratheon servants did the same after her family was toppled.

This was the right choice. The only choice. She’d left things unfinished in Meereen, and she felt guilty for that, but it had been impossible to untangle. She couldn’t have stayed there forever. She hadn’t even liked Meereen, with its confounding politics and its endless betrayals. She hated trying to become something she wasn’t, hiding her dragons away to make the people think her less of a barbarian, as though their barbarism wasn’t glaring. Leaving was the only thing that could have fixed it. And Westeros needed her.

 Does it? Or do you need Westeros?

She’d asked herself the question dozens of times as they sailed to Dragonstone. When the boat rocked so much she couldn’t sleep. When they lost people to a terrible storm. When her people went hungry and got sick. She asked herself and could not find an answer. Perhaps it was both. She had given up so much to get here. She couldn’t abandon her path now.

If I look back, I am lost.

And yet…coming to Westeros, preparing to take back her family’s throne. Was this not also looking back? Should she have struck out in the opposite direction? Should she have been more thorough with her conquering of other lands? The places she had taken had reverted back to their old ways so soon after she left them, and she had given it up as inevitable, but what if it hadn’t been? If she was going to rule Westeros, should she not have given actual ruling more of a shot?

She didn’t know anymore. She had been a child when she first began to dream of retaking Westeros. A child who longed to follow her father. Avenge her father. Fulfill the legacy that her brother never had the chance to. She had once been so sure of herself, of her purpose.

She wasn’t that child any longer.

She must have been more naive as a girl than she ever realized, to expect that Westeros would fall to their knees for hope of a Targaryen come again. She had believed Illyrio when he claimed it, just as Viserys had. She had believed that the smallfolk suffered beneath Baratheon rule and longed for the day that the Targaryens would return to free them. She understood better now that smallfolk didn’t care who ruled them. The smallfolk prayed for a good harvest. They prayed for a good master, or a good ruler, or a good god or goddess. They prayed for the health of their families.

The smallfolk didn’t care about the great houses. They would not care about her dragons, except to be afraid of them. They would not care about her except as someone who might make their lives easier. And if she didn’t? If she failed them? They would hate her for that just as she once dreamed they hated the Usurper.

Tyrion found her in the war room. Stannis Baratheon’s tokens were still spread across the map table. It was her family’s again, as it had been once. It should have felt better to reclaim it. She should feel more.

She found herself wondering where it had gone wrong for Stannis. Studying his intentions on the map, trying to puzzle it out. She would have to ask Varys or Tyrion for more information about his campaign. She hardly understood why. If I look back, I am lost. It was done. It had happened. Still, perhaps there was something she could learn. Avoid his failings, at least.

“Your grace,” Tyrion said, calling her attention. He was looking at her curiously, in a way that made her suddenly self-conscious. Why shouldn’t she study the would-be king’s choices? What was there to be embarrassed about? She felt her defenses rising. She hated it, this feeling like she always had to perform. For her people. For her advisors. Even for her friends. She wanted to rest.

“What is it, Tyrion?” she asked, gentle to make up for the guilt she felt along with her annoyance with him. It wasn’t Tyrion’s fault that she felt less than she wished she did.

“I just wanted to make sure you were settling in,” Tyrion answered, and she felt her annoyance bleeding away at the expression on his face. He was lying, of course. He had noticed her dissatisfaction with Dragonstone and was using this quiet moment to check in on her. A surge of affection for him washed over her. He had been a good choice for a Hand, even if sometimes she wondered what she had been thinking when she offered him the position.

“I thought it would feel more like home,” she admitted. Tyrion raised himself up to sit on a stool that had been pulled up to the War Table. It was shorter than it should be, for a man of his height, and Daenerys made a note to find him a better one. There had to be something in this dreary place. She continued, “they’ve all followed me here for a purpose. I mean to fulfill that purpose. But I thought it would mean more to me to be here. It’s meant to be my birthright.”

“It is your birthright,” Tyrion agreed. “But you must still take it away from my sister before you can truly call it home. Perhaps that’s what worries you.”

“I don’t know if it’s worry,” Dany said. She allowed herself to be a young girl again. She examined her own thoughts in a way she normally didn’t allow herself to do. “I think it’s disappointment.”

Tyrion smiled at that, and he leaned over to cover her hand briefly with his own.

“Dragonstone isn’t quite to my tastes either,” he admitted before leaning back and standing up on the stool so he could draw a finger along the short distance from Dragonstone to Kings Landing. “Well, Kings Landing isn’t either, but at least it’s lively.”

“You were Hand of the King there, once,” she said. “Tell me about it.”

“Acting Hand,” he reminded her with a fond smile. He sat back on the stool and considered. “Kings Landing is…well. Kings Landing is two cities, really. Or three, maybe four. I suppose it’s the same in every land.”

“Are you talking in riddles, or just trying to annoy me?”

“Trying to make it sound nicer than it really is, I think,” Tyrion admitted. “Kings Landing is a cesspool, if you want my opinion of it, but that doesn’t exactly make it sound enticing.”

“I don’t need it to be enticing. I would be surprised if it was a good place to live, with your sister in charge of it.”

“It isn’t just my sister, though I’m loath to give her even that much praise, and I’ll never admit it outside this room. Kings Landing has been mired in its own filth for a long time. Any place you have wealthy men vying for control of what other wealthy men have, it turns into a nightmare of corruption. Noble men like Ned Stark last less than half a year before losing their heads, while ignoble men like my father and Petyr Baelish thrive, because they have enough coin to buy the Goldcloaks to do their evil deeds. And that’s just the nobility! The merchants are cutthroat. The beggars are murderers. The children starve. The Goldcloaks profit, the Kingsguard stands by and allows it. Nobody wins but the king, or the queen, I suppose. Until they’re no longer winning anymore, and someone else takes the Iron Throne and does nothing to fix it.”

He watched her, trying to pretend he wasn’t, and she knew that he expected her to mention his brother. She didn’t, though she filed it away for later in the conversation.

“Your initial two cities you mentioned,” she said. “The wealthy and the rest?”

“Yes. As it is everywhere. My own frustrations with trying to wrangle the city have jaded me, but in truth Kings Landing isn’t particularly special. All cities, all kingdoms, have that divide. The masses and the masters. A good ruler will have to rule both, of course, but neither will welcome you.”

She nodded. She remembered being the girl who believed that Westeros would rise against the Baratheons at the first sign of the dragons come again. She knew better now. If they knelt to her, it would be out of fear or a lack of better options. It would be because she had forced them to their knees. It may be her birthright, but she wasn’t the only one who thought so. Cersei Lannister must feel it was her right too, for outliving the sons who had worn the crown before her. She was a fool for thinking it, but she probably thought Dany was a fool for thinking the throne should be hers because her father had sat in it before being overthrown.

Perhaps that was all these wars really amounted to: everyone thinking the other claimants were fool for thinking theirs was the strongest.

“We have to take the crown from your sister before I can worry about what I'll do when I wear it,” she said. She had her doubts and her discomforts and her wonderings about why she even wanted this cold, empty throne and the strange kingdom that contained it, but her people had followed her here, and she would not disappoint them now by being too careful or not strong enough to commit to the course she had chosen long ago. “What would you advise, Tyrion?”

Tyrion considered, though she knew that he had likely been considering for weeks now, all the way from Meereen.

“My family isn’t popular,” he said finally. “Not with the smallfolk, and certainly not with most of the houses, great or small. But you’ll need a majority of the great houses on your side if you’re to take the throne with as little rebellion as possible. Some of the smaller ones will be loyal to my sister for the simple reason that she feuds with most of the bigger ones. A smart head of a small house might hope to take a castle and a loftier title if Cersei keeps her throne. You already have Dorne on your side, and that’s nothing to sneer at. Highgarden as well, though they bring less to the war table than I would like. If Yara and Theon Greyjoy are able to take back the Iron Islands, their ships may make a considerable difference. But the others...the Freys are my sister’s allies for now, but they can probably be swayed. I’m not sure how much they would be worth, and I wouldn’t advise trusting them. The last man who did lost his head for it, and he lost the war as well. If the whispers Varys has heard are true, then I would say that you should send ravens to Winterfell. The Starks have more reason to hate my sister than anyone, and Jon Snow commands an army of Wildlings, along with the Night’s Watch. Petyr Baelish controls the Eyrie, and the army of the Vale isn’t so small, either. Another untrustworthy sort, but he responds well to flattery and gold, and we have plenty of both. Those two armies combined could be worth a lot.”

Daenerys looked at the map on the table in front of her. Her eyes traced the locations as her Hand said them. The north felt very far away. Prohibitively far, especially since Varys had speculated that the Starks would have taken heavy losses in reclaiming their home. Still, perhaps Tyrion was right. They would perhaps have a sympathy with Dany’s aims. Not only because they hated Cersei Lannister, but because they knew what it was like to be driven out, and they knew what it was like to want to return home again.

“It’s good advice,” she admitted. “You were married to Sansa Stark, you said. Do you think that will help our case or hurt it?”

“Our marriage was never consummated. I never touched her, and I never pressured her. I can’t say that she liked me any. She did leave me in the lion's den and run off when I was accused of murdering my nephew. But…I don’t think I gave her any true reason to hate me. I was clear that I didn’t want the marriage any more than she did.”

“So it could be good,” Dany teased. “Or bad. Depending on her side of the tale.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Tyrion admitted with a grimace. “But either way, I can assure you that her feelings for my sister are much less complicated. If it came to a choice, she would ally with me. I’m certain of it.

“And your brother?” Dany asked. She tried to sound casual, but it was difficult, and she knew she hadn’t quite managed it; Tyrion’s gaze shuttered, and he looked away. His blankness was a poor attempt. Dany found it curious, his constant reluctance to speak about his brother, though he must have understood why she was interested in knowing more about him. The Kingslayer. The man who had killed her father. She had wondered about him for her entire life. Her own brother used to tell stories about him, and how fearsome and terrible he was. Other children dreamed of grumpkins and snarks hiding under their beds, but for Dany it was always The Kingslayer with his sharp smile and his gleaming sword dripping with her father’s blood, come to finish the job.

“I don’t know how Sansa feels about my brother,” Tyrion said quietly. “I don’t know if they ever interacted. If they did, it was probably not encouraging. Jaime never knows how to be serious, and he often says the wrong thing.”

“I’m sure he was serious enough when he put his sword through my father’s back,” Dany said, prodding deeper, enjoying the way Tyrion squirmed under her scrutiny. He was so good at slipping away from her questions, but she had him pinned now.

“Is it my true thoughts you want?” he asked. “Or more platitudes about my loyalty to you?”

“I would have your true thoughts always. If I wanted people who bow to me, I have no shortage of those. If I wanted someone to tell me only that I am doing things correctly, I would have kept Daario with me. I want the truth.”

Tyrion sighed, and he nodded. He didn’t seem convinced, but he cleared his throat and began.

“Barristan Selmy would never admit it, because he was an old fool who swore oaths and thought that was all that mattered. But I’m sure he told you enough. That your father was mad. That near the end of his life, he bore little resemblance to the man he had been before.”

“Yes,” Dany said, only slightly warning. “I’ve heard his thoughts.”

“You and I should both know by now that some aspects of family are better learned than emulated. Learned if only for the purpose of avoiding the same mistakes. You are not your father, and I am not mine. I rather like that we have that in common. We both know what it means to shed the shackles of family ties and to want to do better. I don’t mention your father to upset you. I mention your father to defend my brother’s choice. He was my big brother, and when it happened, I assumed that he must have done it for some noble reason, because I loved him. I worshipped him. I believed him capable of any good thing and absolutely nothing bad. I’m older now, and not quite so foolish, and now I look back, and my brother’s choice looks more like the panicked decision of a man not very far past childhood. A boy, really. Left alone with a mad king who had already slaughtered the head and the heir to a great house, and who was every day receding from rationality. I don’t know why my brother killed your father, your grace, but he was never quite the same afterward. He turned sharp where before he had been strong. Brittle where he had been unyielding. He dreamed of knighthood and songs when he was a child, and he was always the one to tell them to me in my nursery, but afterwards he’d laugh at the thought of true knights. He never told me what he was thinking when he broke his vows and killed his king. I never asked. I trusted that it was for the right reason, and I have never questioned it. He freed me from the dungeons in Kings Landing for the same reason. I don’t claim that he’s an entirely good man. He has done things and supported things that I cannot dismiss. But he is not the man I think you imagine when you think of him, and I hope that you can at least believe that.”

Dany could not help but think of her own changing views of her brother as they grew. Viserys was everything when she was a child. He gave her presents and read her stories and told her tales of their family and how they were going to one day take revenge. Perhaps he was never as perfect in Dany’s eyes as Tyrion claimed his brother was in his, but it was difficult to say, with so much time passed. She was remembering things wrong already. Softening memories so they felt less terrible. Still, she understood Tyrion. The desperate look on his face. The way he needed her to understand. She loved her brother that way too, once. Sometimes she wished she still could. That he had not allowed his pettiness and his selfishness to ruin him.

“I believe you,” she said. “And I believe that when it’s time, you’ll make the right choice.”

Tyrion nodded.

“I will,” he said, unblinking. Whatever the right choice might have meant to him, he was certainly set on making it.

“Send a raven to Winterfell,” she said. “Let’s see what the north has to offer.”

Chapter Text

She followed her brothers at first without invitation.

She wasn’t sure what they were doing, sneaking away from the feast so early. She knew it was likely nothing important. She trusted them. She trusted them. She did. She trusted them more than any other men.

But they left the hall together, quietly and secretively, and so she followed.

Before, trust meant something different than what it had come to mean. Trust used to mean that she could watch her brothers leave the room and not automatically wonder what they were discussing that had to be said away from her. Perhaps it was only Littlefinger that had changed her. Taught her that she could no longer afford to trust in the same way. But she knew that the queen deserved some credit. She had trusted Cersei, and she had loved Cersei, and Cersei had burned her for it.

She just always needed to know, now. She never used to understand why kings and queens needed spymasters to work within their own kingdoms. She never used to understand why Lord Baelish was paying so much gold to so many people who seemed to constantly be reporting on each other more than they were reporting on his enemies.

She understood now: trust was a beautiful thing, but certainty was safer.

Robb led Jon towards what used to be their father’s office, and Sansa walked faster to catch up with them. Both brothers turned to look at her, but only Jon smiled. He inclined his head.

“Enough dancing?” he asked, polite. Almost wry, like he was trying to be funny. She met Robb’s eyes.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “Everyone will be wondering.”

“And you thought also leaving would help that?” Robb asked. She couldn’t say why the joking tone made her so angry, but it did. She drew herself up taller, frowning at him. She was glad to have him back. She was glad to have him alive. But if he thought that he was going to keep secrets from her…

Jon is mine now too, she wanted to say, like a bratty little girl. He isn’t just yours and Arya’s and Bran’s. He’s mine now too.

“Whatever it is that you have to tell me,” Jon said swiftly. “Sansa should hear it.”

She noticed now that there was a tension in Jon that hadn’t been there when she spoke with him at the celebration. Was it possible that he wanted her along for support? No. She dismissed the thought. Jon would take on the whole of the world by himself if it meant he didn’t have to inconvenience her. He knew she felt excluded, and he wanted to make sure she didn’t.

“I should hear it,” Sansa agreed, because Robb hesitated.

“All right,” he said. “Quickly. Before we’re noticed.”

Even following him, even entering their father’s office with him, even seeing him sit at the desk that their father used to sit at every day when he was dealing with the most boring parts of running Winterfell, it was still so impossible to have Robb back in front of her. She’d had only a few sips of wine during the feast, but those sips had been potent enough to make it even less real. It was Robb. Her big brother. She loved him, and she had mourned him, and she had resented him, but he was here. Alive to be loved and resented once again without the grief to color every part of it.

It had become habit for Sansa to hide her true face behind a mask, always afraid that Lord Baelish would see more than she wanted him to and would use it against her somehow. But it was only the three of them now in this room, and she could let the mask drop. She could look at Robb as much as she wanted. Actually, she couldn’t quite bring herself to look away from him. If you do, the stupid little girl that still sometimes lived inside her insisted, he will disappear, and you will realize that this has all been some horrible dream.

But Robb in her dreams never looked like this.

When she was in Kings Landing, she would dream of Robb bursting into her room. He would be holding a blood-covered sword, and he would throw Joffrey’s head down at the foot of her bed. He would open his arms and lift her into them. He would carry her out of that awful place, down the steps of the Red Keep, and through the streets of Kings Landing. He would be Robb just as she remembered. Still a boy, but somehow enough to fight through every terrible person in Kings Landing who tried to stop him from saving her. The Kingsguard would all be dead at Robb’s feet as he walked. He would tell Sansa not to look, but she would have to. She would have to see. Cersei would be dead, too, and her father, and her brothers. Robb would walk with his head high, and she would love him with all her heart.

The Robb who had been returned to her was not half as glittering or bright as the boy she had dreamed. She wondered if he was disappointed in her differences as much as she was in his.

For a few moments, when she ran to him in the courtyard and hugged him, she was that girl again, and Robb was that boy. But those moments had faded quickly, and then she saw the truth. The dark circles under his eyes. The way he seemed leaner than before—not in the way that Jon was lean with fighting strength, but lean in a way that came with a long illness. The way he seemed distant, detached somehow.

He was not the boy she remembered. He was not he big brother she remembered. Maybe part of her confusion was because there was still so much anger within her that she had not allowed herself to speak aloud, and she felt she couldn’t express it to this stranger.

Robb leaned his elbows against the desk when he sat, after he shed his cloak. It made him look smaller, hunched over. Sansa sat across from him. Jon took the time to build up the fire in the hearth, and then he took the chair beside Sansa. All of it was slow and purposeful, as was his way, and Sansa could tell he was trying to postpone this as long as possible.

Sansa had been sure since Robb returned that it was too much good to last, and it seemed Jon felt the same way. Blessings like this didn’t happen. Not to their family. Not without some sort of payment swiftly following.

“What I say here cannot leave this room,” Robb said. “Not until we decide what we want to do about it.” He looked between Sansa and Jon with a pointedness that Sansa would have found insulting if she wasn’t so worried.

“We promise,” she said, because Jon didn’t say anything. He met her eyes, plain concern on his face, but then he nodded, too.

Robb stood again, and he paced towards the fire. Another one of his blank moments? But no, he turned back to face them. He was visibly bracing himself for what would come next.

“When Uncle Brynden took me out of The Twins, we went north instead of south. Winterfell had fallen to the Ironborn, so we would find no safety there, but Brynden knew that the Freys would be marching to Riverrun, and that they would catch up with us, as wounded as I was. We went instead to Greywater Watch, because he knew that Howland Reed was a friend of father’s. Brynden and four other men took me to safety on the backs of their horses. I was near death for all of it. I still don’t know how I survived. I don’t know why.”

“To return to us,” Sansa couldn’t help but say. Robb shook his head. Sansa’s mask went back up. She pretended that the rejection didn’t hurt.

“You didn’t need me,” Robb said. “You still don’t need me.” He smiled, but it was a bitter grimace of an expression. He continued, “Howland Reed was with father during the war. They fought together. They went to Dorne together.” Robb took a sharp, deep breath. “He told me something that father…that he and father did during the war. Something that father never told anyone. He lied to us. All of us. For years.”

“Father?” Jon asked doubtfully. Sansa didn’t know what Robb was going to say. She had no idea what he could be talking about. Dread pooled in her stomach anyway. Robb’s eyes were entirely on Jon, now. Almost pleading.

“They went to Dorne to retrieve his sister, Aunt Lyanna. She was being held there by Rhaegar, or at least that’s what they thought. When they arrived, they fought the Kingsguard, just like the stories say. Howland and father were the only ones left alive at the end, and then father went into the tower. When he came out, he was carrying a child.”

“Robb,” Sansa gasped. Jon had grown very still beside her. She reached for his hand, but it was limp in hers, and cold.

“Her son,” Robb continued. “Rhaegar’s son. Before she died, she made father promise that he would protect him from Robert. So father claimed him as his own.”

Sansa finally looked at Jon, tried to see his expression. There was only a blank, uncertain shock. Like he understood that Robb must have been talking of him but couldn’t quite understand how that could be true.

“Me,” he finally said, breaking the silence.

“Yes,” Robb said.

“I’m not…I’m…gods.”

“Here, Jon,” Sansa said, getting swiftly to her feet and pouring him some wine from the bottle by the sideboard. Jon took the goblet she gave him, but he didn’t drink. He looked between she and Robb, and she knew that he must have been close to panic. Sansa was close to it herself. She poured herself a goblet too, and unlike Jon she sipped from it liberally.

Jon. Her cousin. Jon her cousin. Not her half-brother. Not her brother at all. She always said he wasn’t her brother, and she was right. She felt like she might be sick, and she swallowed down more wine.

“Gods,” she said, and Jon’s eyes flickered to hers, desperate and needing comfort that she wasn’t sure how to give. “We need to…” she started. She tried to think. “We need to figure out how to break the news. If we’re seen as hiding it…”

“Sansa,” Robb said, sharp and annoyed, like he would have when they were children and he thought she was ruining some play. She glared back at him, but his eyes were on Jon, and Sansa deflated. He was right, of course. She was doing it again. Focusing too much on results and not enough on what people felt.

I’m broken, she thought. Forgive me, Jon. I’m broken, and I don’t know how to offer comfort the way I used to. I don’t know how to love the way I could before.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She went and sat back down in her chair, and she leaned in towards his. She covered his hands with her own where they rested numbly on his knees. “Jon, I’m so sorry. But you’re still our brother. You’re still you. This doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything,” Jon insisted, and he pulled his hands away and stood, putting distance between them.

“It doesn’t have to,” Robb argued.

“The northern lords barely tolerated the Bastard of Winterfell. How do you think they’ll feel about the bastard of the last Targaryen prince? Rhaegar Targaryen stole and raped Lyanna. That’s the story that everyone knows. That’s the story they remember. And if I’m his son, that monster’s son…”

“You’re her son too, Jon,” Sansa insisted. She went to him, stopped him from going any further, put her hands out and caught his arms, holding to them firmly when he tried to pull away again. “The north hasn’t forgotten Lyanna, and you’re her son too.”

“And you’re our brother,” Robb agreed. “No matter what happens next.”

“They’ll ask me to leave. They’ll want me to go back to the Wall.”

“They won’t,” Sansa said.

“You know they will. Littlefinger will…”

“I won’t let him! Jon, please. We don’t have to make any decisions tonight. Our heads will be clearer tomorrow. All right?” She looked at him hopefully, and he nodded. Sullen and a bit annoyed, but at least he wasn’t trying to run. She squeezed his arms again before turning back to look at Robb, who was still standing by the fire, looking sick.

“I’ll make your excuses,” she said. “Please, just…don’t do anything rash. Either of you.”

With a huff of annoyance, Robb nonetheless nodded, and Jon mirrored him. Sansa left without further words. She couldn’t think of the right ones to say.

She headed back to the feast, because she had to, but her limbs felt ungainly, shaky from more than just the quick consumption of wine. Brienne was waiting for her in the hall, of course. She looked concerned, though she hid it behind the stoic mask that she thought Sansa couldn’t see behind.

“Are you all right, my lady?” she asked.

“Yes, Brienne, thank you,” Sansa answered. It didn’t sound convincing, but Brienne didn’t question it. Sansa appreciated that. She felt foolish, childish, her fingers fisted in the fabric of her dress because she needed something to hold on to. “I need to return to the feast.”

“Of course, my lady,” Brienne said.

Brienne melted away into the crowd once Sansa was back in the midst of her people. Very few of them stopped her to ask after Robb and Jon. Whenever they did, Sansa gave them the pretty explanations they wanted, talking of Robb’s exhaustion and Jon’s eagerness speak with his brother alone. It was an easy thing to believe, and the lords believed it. Many of them had had brothers once, too. They nodded wisely and murmured their support. It was easy for men to understand: brotherhood. They felt it was their arena, and it made sense for Sansa to be barred from it. Only Lady Mormont seemed suspicious, but she eventually just rolled her eyes and said something about boys being idiots at every age, and then she wandered off.

Littlefinger waited, but of course he eventually made his approach. He probably wanted to confirm that her neither of her brothers—her brother and her cousin, she remembered with a near-hysterical jolt—were coming back. He plainly felt safer when Jon wasn’t around.

“Sansa,” he said, as if he hadn’t been looking for her, as if he had just chanced upon her. “I haven’t had a chance to speak with you since your brother returned. What happy news for the Starks. Your mother would be so happy to see him returned safely.”

Sansa gritted her teeth. My mother, she thought, is dead. And I am not my mother.

“She would be,” she agreed instead. “It was good of Uncle Brynden to stay with him for so long. I can’t imagine how they survived.”

“By the grace of the gods, surely,” Littlefinger said, like it was a private joke they shared, somehow. Most of the things he said to her were like that. Like it was something she was supposed to understand. Sansa smiled.

“Surely,” she repeated.

“It was your uncle the Blackfish I wanted to discuss with you,” Littlefinger said. Ah, so there it was. He moved closer, more private, as if wanting to tell her something deeply secret. His hand cupped her elbow, exerting almost no pressure, but managing to make Sansa feel like she was caged anyway. A pretty, caged bird, exactly as he wanted her. She refused to back down, though she felt her chest constrict at the nearness of him.

If you need her, Brienne is nearby. She’ll come if you look at her. That’s all you have to do. Don’t be afraid.

“What about my uncle?” she asked. She kept her voice low, like his, and he smiled at her as if pleased by her quickness in picking up on his desire for secrecy.

“He’s ambitious,” Littlefinger said. “And I would caution you against trusting him. I know that I have been mistaken before, and you have every right to question my judgement, but on this, I’m much more certain. I was fostered at Riverrun, remember, and I knew your mother’s family well.”

Yes, Sansa thought, wryly amused by all of it as Littlefinger continued speaking. Of course that is what you would say.

She spoke to Lord Royce, afterwards, and she mentioned the possibility of sending Brynden back to the Vale to look after Robert Arryn and work on calming some of the chaos that still lingered after Lady Lysa's death. It wasn’t a very difficult sell. The lords of the Vale trusted Brynden more than they had ever trusted Littlefinger, and they would easily fall in line behind him. Lord Royce was not yet certain of Robb, but he was certain of Sansa. He would follow her. Between he and Brynden, they would have the support of the Vale, and she would no longer have to indulge Littlefinger in his schemes.

Littlefinger’s influence would wane the longer he was away from those prickly, inconstant lords, and with someone like the Blackfish back among them, they would be sure to realize that they had been won over by empty flattery and promises of grandeur that had never materialized. Littlefinger would think her choice to remove Brynden a foolish little girl’s response to his warnings, not a powerplay. He might be annoyed by it, but his blindspot was her. He would mostly be pleased that Brynden would no longer be around to interfere. He wouldn’t have warned her if he wasn’t afraid of what influence her mother’s uncle might have with her.

Brynden, when she quickly summarized her aims as she pretended to chance upon him during a circuit around the hall, was amused by the idea, especially when he heard that she primarily wanted to send him because she didn’t trust Petyr Baelish.

“Good,” he said brusquely. “I knew you were a smart girl. I’ll do what I can to make sure that the Vale stays loyal to you and Robb.”

Sansa nodded, and she smiled at him before quickly moving away so that Littlefinger didn’t think she was spending too much time with her uncle. She noticed, of course, that Brynden had said nothing about Jon. She felt a pang of guilt for it, but it couldn’t be helped. Not until it was time for the truth to come out.

Chapter Text

It was entirely possible that Jon was drunk.

He hadn’t meant for it to happen. He’d meant to keep a clear head so that he could process the news calmly, like a rational man would. Then again, perhaps that was exactly what he was doing. Most of the men he had known in his life would have reacted to this kind of news by drinking heavily and then maybe getting into a fight.

Jon didn’t feel like fighting. Jon felt like drinking and perhaps crying, but he wouldn’t ever admit that to Robb, especially since Robb just looked so guilty.

The only man Jon could think of who wouldn’t have reacted to this news with drunken fighting—aside from Sam and, well, actually now he could think of a great number of men, like Lord Commander Mormont and Aemon Targaryen and. Gods. Jon was going to be sick—but the point was that there was always one man that Jon could count on as a moral compass, and now that wasn’t even true.

“That might be the worst part,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure that was right. The worst part was the potential for madness running through his veins, probably. But the other thing was also pretty bad. “He lied. He lied for years. Every time I made a decision, however difficult it was, I always tried to pick something that would make him proud. But I didn’t know him at all. None of us did.”

“We knew him,” Robb said. He sighed when he said it. Just so weary. Robb was drunk too, sprawled out on the couch across the room. Jon was propped up at the desk, feeling slightly jealous of the couch. He kind of wanted the couch. Why did Robb always get everything, just because Robb wasn’t a bastard?

I’d at least like a seat by the fire, Jon thought, so he went and laid on the rug on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He probably wouldn’t do this if he wasn’t drunk, and the thought was a bit thrilling. Why not get drunk? You just found out you’re half fucking dragon. Drink away, my boy.

“Did we know him?” he wondered. “He lied to your mother. He let her believe that he dishonored her. He let us all believe it.”

“I don’t pretend to understand why he didn’t ever tell her,” Robb admitted. “He should have trusted her. She could have been…well.” A mother to you, Jon finished inwardly, miserably. He knew that was what Robb had been about to say. “But he didn’t lie for no reason. He lied to protect you. Because he made a promise to his sister to protect you, and so he kept it. That was the kind of man he was.”

“He lied,” Jon insisted.

“For good reason,” Robb fired back. “It’s about doing what’s right, not about just…not lying ever, for any reason. Sometimes you have to do a bad thing for the greater good. That’s how it works. It doesn’t mean you’re bad for it. Not if you’re doing it for the right reasons! Circumstances are…different sometimes. For different people. It isn’t just all the same all the time.” At least Jon was pretty sure Robb had said circumstances. It was a bit slurred and backward. “What would you have done, then? If it was Sansa?”

Well. That was an easy answer. Embarrassingly easy, actually. Jon just nodded. Yes, if it was Sansa, he would do anything. He had proven that already, hadn’t he? And if it was Arya, he’d do the same. He’d keep that promise.

“I suppose,” he admitted. “He still should have told me.”

“I’m sure he meant to,” Robb said. It sounded false, like Robb just felt like he had to say something.

Not that Jon blamed him. Jon wouldn’t have known how to deliver that news any better than Robb had. Jon would have probably done a worse job, come to think of it. Robb was always better at everything.

“All my life, I only wanted to make him proud,” he admitted. He sounded more sober than he was. He wanted more to drink, but he didn’t want to get up, and he knew he should stop anyway. Sansa had told them not to do anything rash, and he so hated disappointing Sansa. “On the wall, I always asked myself if my father would have been proud of me. And he wasn’t my father at all.”

“Of course he was your fucking father,” Robb snapped. Jon looked at him. Robb’s expression was hard to read, especially because it swam and danced, but also because it was thunderous and serious and so unlike the Robb that Jon remembered.

I don’t know him, Jon thought. Not the way I used to.

“My father was a…” he started, but Robb shook his head.

“Your father was the man who raised you. It doesn’t matter whose blood is in you. You’re more Stark than any of us. You protected Sansa when I didn’t. You took back Winterfell when I couldn’t. You are a Stark, Jon. You got a direwolf pup, didn’t you? And you actually kept yours alive! Sansa and I couldn’t manage that! If you don’t want anyone but us three to know about what I told you, we can keep that secret. We can. It’s not anything to do with anyone but us. Do you understand?”

Jon nodded at last, mostly because Robb expected it. Really, he wondered. Wondered about blood and fathers and mothers and what madness might mark him as his father’s son. He wondered about Sansa. His sister. His cousin.

There had been so many days he thought he came back wrong, but what if it wasn’t the red woman’s magic at all? What if it was just him? Targaryen madness. The gods flipping a coin. What would she think? Would she be as ready to call him brother as Robb? She was different now from how she had been as a child, but she still cared about those things. She cared about legitimacy and appeasing the people who questioned his claim because of his status. She cared about politics, and he understood why. He knew what she had gone through and what she'd had to do to adapt and survive. Things like politics and alliances and birth order were meaningless on the Wall, but that didn’t mean they were meaningless everywhere. Sansa would cling to whatever power she had because she knew what it was like to be powerless, and she knew how unsafe it made you when you were.

It wasn’t like he had lied to her. It wasn’t like he had given her any reason to distrust him. But what would she think? Would she worry about him now that she knew? Perhaps it was easy to trust a brother, whether that brother was half or whole. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so easy now. A cousin instead of a brother. Jon instead of Robb.

“Things won’t be the same,” he said miserably. Robb sighed.

“Of course they will,” he said. “Nothing has to change.”

But it did. Why couldn’t Robb see that? Of course it had to change. He was different. He was wrong somehow. Back to life when he should be dead, and now he wasn’t their brother at all. He needed to go. He needed to leave. It would be better for everyone.

“Sansa would kill you if you left,” Robb said, and Jon realized he was drunker than he thought, if he could speak aloud without meaning to.

“Maybe it would be for the best,” he said weakly.

“Sansa killing you?”

“No. I don’t know. Leaving. Less to deal with.”

“You’re not leaving,” Robb said. It was a man’s voice he spoke with. A lord’s voice. “The Starks belong in Winterfell, and you are still a Stark. There will be no more talk of leaving.”

Jon lapsed into a sulky silence, and he stared into the flames. Fire and Blood. Gods. What a terrifying house motto, for fuck’s sake. He wished Maester Aemon was still at the wall. He would leave now. Ride to him. Tell the old man that there was a Targaryen left to him. But there were no more dragons at the wall. Just him. And he had already died once.

Sansa left so quickly after the revelation. He wondered what she was planning. If she was plotting something. He trusted her. He did. But every time he saw Littlefinger whispering in her ear…

It twisted his gut to think she could ever betray her family. But he knew that power could be a poison, and that even the best people could be lured by it. He didn’t think he would blame Sansa if she conspired against him somehow. He would be hurt. Perhaps he would be heartbroken. But he wouldn’t blame her. She needed to keep herself safe, and he wasn’t sure that his presence did that anymore.

No one can protect anyone, she had said. Defeated and lost, the night before the battle. And she had resisted his every attempt to keep her safe since. Maybe she was right.

He dozed for a while. He wasn’t sure how long. When he woke, it was to the clink of armor and Sansa’s heavy sigh. He turned to find her voice, and he saw Brienne helping Robb to his feet. Sansa was looming over him with her arms folded across her chest, but then she crouched down beside him. There was a fondness to her irritation that made him smile involuntarily, though he knew he should be embarrassed.

“Can you get up, Jon?” she asked. He did, lurching to his feet. Brienne sent him an impatient look over her shoulder. “I’ve got him, Brienne,” Sansa said. Oh, and now he was embarrassed. Amused tolerance for her brother—her cousin—because he’d gone and made an ass of himself.

“I’m sorry, Sansa,” he said, but she only laughed at him and took his arm to steady him.

“My two foolish brothers,” she said. She sounded so warm, and it went straight to his head, faster than the wine had. He smiled at her again.

He followed her up to their quarters. He was annoyed to see that Sansa had given up the lord’s chambers for Robb. Jon had been so glad to win that battle with her, convince her to take something good for herself. But he couldn’t even claim that victory now. Brienne steered Robb through the door of the room that used to be Sansa’s, and Sansa led Jon down towards his. There was a girl lighting a fire when they entered, but she didn’t look at them. Just scurried out as quickly as she could manage. Sansa turned back his covers, and Jon felt himself flushing.

“I’m an idiot,” he said, all apology again, and again Sansa smiled at him. How? Why? He wanted to ask but didn’t dare, afraid that his reminder would remind her that he wasn’t her brother anymore. Actually, if he wasn’t her brother, should she even be in the room with him? Alone with him? He wasn’t sure how that worked, but cousins could marry cousins, so it probably wasn’t very proper to be in a room like this together, no matter how long they spent as siblings first. He should ask her, but then she might leave.

She was leaving anyway. She passed close to him, and she gripped his arm in her hand.

“Sleep, Jon,” she said. “I promise you that in the morning, we’ll figure out what to do.”

Jon nodded. His head felt too heavy.

“Whatever you want,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you want. I promise. Even if I’m not your favorite brother anymore. Or your brother at all. Gods. I’ll do anything, Sansa.”

Her expression clouded with something, and she brushed his hair out of his eyes.

“Sleep,” she said. Her voice shook a little. She looked startled by what he had said, and he wished he could remember exactly what it was. “Will you sleep for me?”

“Yes,” he said. Anything. He had promised her, and he would keep his promise. Just like father. He turned at last toward the bed. By the time he reached it and thought to take off his doublet, he heard the door close behind her, and she was gone.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t very long after the feast to celebrate Robb's return that Sansa asked to speak with Brienne privately. She was smiling when she made the request, so Brienne wasn’t particularly worried, but there was something about her lady's manner that made her wary all the same. The Blackfish had departed for the Vale several days earlier, and Sansa had so far made no further moves against Lord Baelish. Brienne had neither the mind nor the patience for the kinds of political games that Sansa had to play with him, and she hoped that she wasn’t going to be called on to help.

When she entered Sansa’s office and closed the door behind her, leaving Pod in the hall to keep watch, her eyes were drawn immediately to the scroll Sansa was holding. It had already been opened, but even broken, the seal was unmistakably Lannister.

“My lady?” she asked. She tried to discern what Sansa was feeling. A letter from Cersei…

But Sansa looked amused, rather than frightened or angry. Confused, certainly, but not stiff with poorly concealed terror the way she had been after Jon had received that letter from Ramsay Bolton when they were at the Wall.

Then again, Sansa had buried her fear deeply during that ordeal. It had only been later that she started to shake, when it was only Brienne to see.

Brienne was always uncertain where she stood with Sansa. She knew that Sansa didn’t quite know how to speak to a woman sworn into her service, which meant they were both awkward and stilted about it, since Brienne didn’t know how to talk to a lady she was sworn to, either. With Lady Catelyn, it had been different. Lady Catelyn was older, and motherly, and kind but in a distant way. Sansa felt more like a younger sister than a mother. She was capable and independent, but she was stronger with Brienne beside her, and it made Brienne feel more than just physically protective. Sansa was uncertain, too. Hesitant to make a wrong move and plunge her family back into the chaos after they had only just gotten themselves out. She asked for Brienne’s thoughts in a way Lady Catelyn never had. Brienne's fierce desire to protect Sansa had become about more than just her sworn vows. She wanted to see her lady safe and happy and content, and she had no idea how to express any of those things. It was like some new language, the mechanics of which she hadn’t yet mastered.

“I’ve received a curious letter,” Sansa said. Her voice, like her expression, held some mirth. Whatever was in the scroll, it wasn’t a threat. Or perhaps it was merely an ineffectual one. Brienne allowed herself to relax into her seat as she waited. Sansa arched one eyebrow and continued, “from Jaime Lannister.”

“Oh,” Brienne said, before she could tell herself to be quiet. Sansa's good humor was definitely more potent now, peeking through her usual stoic mask. Brienne didn’t quite like being at the center of it, but she could at least appreciate that Sansa was feeling it.

“You can imagine my surprise,” Sansa continued. “When instead of more empty threats from his sister, I found a rather earnest inquiry about your health.”

“I,” Brienne started. She swallowed back panicked defensiveness. There’s nothing dishonorable in our friendship, she told herself. A few foolish dreams and girlish fantasies mean nothing. He has been nothing but honorable towards me. She remembered the way he had spoken to her in the beginning, when she’d led him in chains and he was constantly goading her to fuck him in them. He has been nothing but honorable towards me recently, at least. “We saw Ser Jaime at Riverrun. He’s the one who let Podrick and I past the siege lines, my lady. We ran into him again as I was escaping with your brother and uncle. He let us go.”

“According to Uncle Brynden, you didn’t give him much choice,” Sansa said. She sounded approving, but curious, still, like Brienne’s relationship to Jaime was a puzzle she was trying to untangle for herself. Brienne didn’t want to upset Sansa. She wanted to protect her. Still, surely Sansa must understand how complicated these things could be. She wasn’t a child anymore, when things were so simple and people were only as good as the houses they belonged to.

“I would have fought Ser Jaime to protect Robb,” she admitted quietly. “He knew that, and said he was glad of it. But he didn’t force the issue. There is a…regard between us.” Seeing Sansa’s furrowed brow, she hastened to correct with, “a trust.”

“He’s a Lannister,” Sansa said.

“Yes, I know,” Brienne replied. Sansa seemed surprised by her tone. Perhaps it was more defensive than Brienne meant it to sound. She sighed. “He isn’t the man everyone thinks he is.”

“He attacked my father in the street,” Sansa said.

“When our captors tried to rape me, Jaime stopped them, and he lost his hand for it,” Brienne retorted. She knew her face was red from the embarrassment of arguing with her lady, but she needed to explain. Sansa must not think her foolish enough to be swayed by a pretty face attached to a poisonous mind. She knew well what Sansa thought of her own past mistakes in that regard, and she would not have Sansa think her naïve enough to make the same ones at her age. Sansa didn’t say anything. Just watched Brienne carefully, and Brienne took it as permission to continue. “Your mother charged me with his safe passage back to Kings Landing. I hated him. The Kingslayer. But your mother charged me, and so I would keep him safe. We walked for weeks, he in chains and me in my armor. Every time we slept I feared he would break free and kill me, but he was weak after a year in your brother’s camp. He finally took my swords as we crossed a bridge, but I had another, and we fought.”

“You fought Jaime Lannister? When he had both his hands?” Sansa asked, awed and nearly smiling.

“As I said, he was weak from captivity, but…yes. And he never wanted to admit it, but I was winning, too.” Seeing Sansa smile wider, more admiring, Brienne found the strength to continue. “We were captured by the Bloody Mummers before we could finish the fight. They tied us together on a single horse. Ser Jaime told me that they would rape me, and that I should close my eyes and think of better things. He said fighting would only get me killed.” Sansa wasn’t smiling anymore, and Brienne expected her to be as angry with the suggestion as she herself had been, but Sansa only nodded, gesturing for her to continue. “When the men came for me that night, I fought them. It wasn’t enough. Ser Jaime lied to them. He said that my father was wealthy, that Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle because of its mines.”

“For its waters,” Sansa guessed, or maybe it was something she had learned once. Brienne nodded.

“The blue of its waters,” she confirmed. “He convinced them that my father would pay my weight in sapphires, but only if I was returned unharmed. The man in charge of us, Locke, he accepted, and he stopped his men. They tied me back up. Ser Jaime was quite pleased with himself. Locke didn’t like that. He took Jaime over to the fire. I couldn’t see, but I could hear Jaime screaming. I fought against my bonds, but I couldn’t free myself. I thought he had been killed, and that I had failed your mother, but they only took his sword hand.”

“As a message?” Sansa asked.

“I still don’t know,” Brienne admitted. “I think Locke just wanted to hear him scream.”

Sansa's expression ticked slightly.

“Yes,” she said. “Some men like that.” When Brienne hesitated, uncertain what to say, she nodded. “Go on,” she prompted. Brienne wished again that she was better suited for comfort, but she wasn’t. She kept talking, instead.

“They tied the hand around his neck. As the days passed…forgive me, Lady Sansa. You don’t need to hear this.”

“I do,” Sansa argued softly. “To understand, I need to know.”

Brienne hesitated, but Sansa didn’t waver. She was a proper lady, and Brienne wanted to protect her, but she had seen many horrible things within these walls as Ramsay Bolton’s unwilling bride, and she could choose for herself what she was willing to hear. Brienne forced herself to continue.

“His hand rotted. His wrist quickly became infected. They never checked on him or changed the bandages. They gave me the responsibility of caring for him. Cleaning him and feeding him as he grew weaker. They taunted him, and they beat us both frequently, but they never raped me. Ser Jaime’s lie worked. He grew so ill I feared he’d die before we could get to Kings Landing. I still thought there was a chance that his family would agree to the exchange. Jaime was convinced they wouldn’t honor it, but I suspected that he just wanted me to let him die.”

“My mother should not have sent you alone,” Sansa said.

“She didn’t believe she had a choice,” Brienne replied. “She was willing to pay any price if it meant seeing you and your sister safe.” And your brother wasn’t, she didn’t say. The look that passed between the two women acknowledged the reality anyway.

“How did you escape?” Sansa asked. She was invested, Brienne realized. Warmth spread through her, and she ducked her head to hide an amused smile. Sansa liked stories as much as Brienne always had, it seemed.

“We were delivered to Lord Bolton,” she said. She grimaced. “He played at courtesy. He had a maester look at Jaime’s arm. He gave him medicines for the infection. He gave me proper clothing to wear.” At Sansa’s questioning look, she answered, “a hideous pink dress. Even you would have looked outlandish in it. On me, it was ludicrous.”

Sansa laughed, surprising Brienne into joining her.

“Gods, what a petty, evil man,” Sansa said. “At least he allowed you a change of clothes.”

“Yes, it was very courteous of him,” Brienne replied, just as sarcastic. Sansa laughed again. “He also allowed us a bath.” Impossible, of course, not to remember that. The sight of Jaime moving towards her, out of the steam. She had been mortified, but not so mortified that she didn’t notice him. It still came to her sometimes, unbidden, when she bathed. She continued, shakily. “And dinner. Perhaps so he could watch Ser Jaime struggle to cut his food with one hand.”

“Yes, that sounds like Roose Bolton,” Sansa said darkly.

“He agreed to send Ser Jaime to Kings Landing, but I would stay behind, to await my father’s reply to the ransom they wanted for me. Ser Jaime didn’t want to leave me, but we knew well there was nothing we could do. I asked him to honor his promise to your mother, and then he left. But my father had to refuse my ransom. There was no earthly way he could have paid it. Ser Jaime’s lie had worked too well. When Lord Bolton was gone, they received my father’s counteroffer. It was too low, of course.”

“Brienne,” Sansa breathed, and Brienne shook her head to reassure her. The bear pit had been horrible, but it was nothing like what Sansa seemed to fear had happened.

“They had a pit,” she said. “They would throw prisoners in, make them fight a bear for their freedom. They gave me a wooden sword.”

“Monsters,” Sansa breathed. Her eyes were glimmering.

“I tried to fight it off. I was still in that absurd dress. The men were all singing and laughing. I was so...” She exhaled slowly, heavily, remembering the rage she had felt. Like the sight of Jaime’s nakedness through the steam, it was something that came to her often. The rage and fear and the roiling hate for those men. “I was so angry,” she said. “That that was to be my death. I wanted a good one. An honorable one. But the bear had already got its claws in me, and I knew I could not last long against it. Even with Oathkeeper, it would have been a struggle. With a wooden sword…” She shook her head. “I would have died. But Ser Jaime jumped into the pit. He had turned his escort around on the road, when he learned that my ransom had been refused. He came back for me. He had no weapon. One hand. He was still unwell. And he did it anyway. Locke was too afraid to lose Tywin Lannister's heir, and so he ordered us brought up. They tried to stop me from leaving, even so, but Ser Jaime insisted.” Sansa was silent, expressionless. Brienne wanted to stop, but she also wanted it to be as clear as it could be. “On the way back to the capital, he made the maester tend to my wounds, and he slept with himself between me and the other men. He thought I didn’t notice, but of course I did. He made them give me proper traveling clothes, too. They were ill-fitting, but they were better than the dress. He called me his protector, when he was asked. And he made sure I was afforded every respect when we returned to Kings Landing. Even then, we were conspiring to get you away.”

“Conspiring?” Sansa asked, doubtful.

“Ser Jaime knew my aims, and he promised to help. We discussed it often, in the weeks I was there. But your mother was dead, and Robb as well. We had no idea where Arya was, if she was even still in the city. We weren’t sure what we could do, or where I could take you. Then the king died, and you were gone. Ser Jaime gave me armor, his sword, and Podrick. He gave me gold and a horse and supplies. He sent me to find you, to fulfill the promises that we both swore to your mother.”

She met Sansa’s eyes for the last part, because it was important to her that Sansa understood that, even if she couldn’t understand the rest. My vows are his, and his are mine. Sansa breathed out, and she looked back down at the paper in her hands.

“He cares for you,” she finally said. “I suppose that should have been obvious from the tone of this letter, but now I can see it more clearly.”

“Ser Jaime and I went through a lot together,” Brienne agreed quietly. “I know that his family is the enemy of yours, and I am sworn to you. I would stand against him, if it came to it. But he is a good man. He is a man of honor.”

“A man of honor,” Sansa said slowly, disapprovingly. “Would not stand beside Cersei. A man of honor would stop her. Take her from the throne.”

“He did so once,” Brienne reminded her, gently. She wouldn’t spill Ser Jaime’s secrets. They weren’t hers to tell. But everyone knew, at least, that he did kill the Mad King, even if they didn’t understand why.

“Yes, when the king wasn’t his sister,” Sansa said. “Or the woman he loves.”

There was an accusation there that also sounded like a reminder, and Brienne flushed. Yes, she thought. Sansa did know. Just like Cersei. Brienne’s regard for Jaime must have been too obvious. She wished she knew what gave her away. She wished she knew how to control her expression to keep her secrets better hidden.

“Ser Jaime loves his family,” she admitted. She thought again of how he must have fared after the death of his son. He hadn’t cared very much for Joffrey, but Tommen had been young, and so much better natured. She regretted that she hadn’t mentioned his daughter when she saw him last. He’d never had a chance to be a father to his children. It must have hurt him that he had failed to protect all three of them. “Everything he has done, he has done it in service of his family.”

“Which you expect me to understand, of course,” Sansa said dryly. “Perhaps I do. Perhaps I would do anything for my family. But my family is not Cersei. My family does not bring chaos to the realm. We do what we can to help our people, and we are good rulers, even despite our inexperience. My family is fighting for what’s right, and for what’s just. We are taking back our home. We are trying to protect the north from what Jon has seen beyond the Wall. It isn’t the same. To choose to fight for your family is an honorable thing, but not when your family is without honor. And she is the only family he has left. It isn’t honor, Brienne.”

She sounded so apologetic. So sad for Brienne. Brienne had never felt more awkward, or ugly, or unloved.

Foolish, silly Brienne, Sansa’s tone said. Poor, simple Brienne. She fell in love with a man without honor, and she clings to the scant evidence he has shown her of it, because otherwise she would have to admit that she fell in love with a beautiful man who cared nothing for her.

But no, of course that wasn’t what Sansa was saying. That was only what Brienne was hearing, because Brienne had learned years ago that no words prepared you better for the scorn of the world than the ones you could level at yourself.

And those words were true, anyway. Sansa might have been too kind to think them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t right. Jaime was a man of honor. Brienne had seen it. She knew it. But his choices had not been honorable ones. She had seen the regret in his eyes when last they met, and she knew that he did not want to give Riverrun over to the Freys, no matter what his sister had ordered. But it was one thing to disagree with Cersei’s orders, and it was another thing entirely to defy them, and Jaime loved his sister too much to ever go against her. Jaime loved Cersei, and he followed what Cersei told him to do, and there was no honor in that. Honor in intentions only went so far.

“Yes,” she admitted aloud, quietly. “If he could find the will to do what was right, Ser Jaime would be…he is a good man. I don’t ask you to believe it. I don’t have the proof you would require to believe it. But he is a good man. If not for his sister…” She sighed. She leaned back in her chair. She felt very light, suddenly. “I know it doesn’t matter, my lady. What he wants to do and what he chooses to do are very different. And what I want to believe and what I choose to do about those beliefs are different as well. If I am called upon to stand against him in service to your family, I will. That is all that matters. I would not want you to doubt that.”

“Brienne,” Sansa said softly, and her hand reached out, and it covered Brienne’s own.  Jaime did so once, she thought, thinking of the way his fingers had covered hers when she reached for the knife at the table with Roose Bolton. It felt more pathetic than ever in the middle of this conversation. “You have never given me any reason to doubt. I know it isn’t…we don’t always choose the best for ourselves.”

“We don’t choose who we love,” Brienne said, dry, wishing that she didn’t hear the echo of Jaime saying the same words in her head. “But we can choose what we do about it. Ser Jaime has chosen poorly. I won’t make the same mistakes.”

Sansa’s small smile was heartbreaking in its sweetness, and Brienne clung to it. This was a service she could be proud of. This was a life she could be happy with. The blistering want that she felt when she saw Ser Jaime was only that—want. Easily suppressed. Easily turned aside. It would never have led to anything anyway.

She had fulfilled Jaime’s oaths for him, and now she had made certain that Sansa could at least understand that there was honor in him still. That was all she could do for him if he would not choose to help himself.

“If you would like to write back to him, of course you may,” Sansa said. “The letter was more for you, anyway.” Bienne could tell that it made Sansa nervous, to give up control of the correspondence, so she shook her head. She could not think of anything she would say to him, anyway, except perhaps to remind him that he didn’t have to follow his sister, and she didn’t think that was something he particularly wanted to hear.

“No, my lady,” she said. “You should handle writing the reply, if you choose to.”

“Is there anything you would like me to include?”

“Only that I am alive,” Brienne answered. “Since that was the original inquiry.”

Sansa nodded, and she dismissed Brienne.

Brienne tried very hard not to think of Jaime for the rest of the day, but of course she was unsuccessful. He seemed closer now than ever. Farther, too, at the same time. She couldn’t imagine that they would ever again have occasion to meet as friends. She wondered if he had realized the same when he raised his golden hand to wave to her. Even from that distance, his expression had been despondent. It was easy to imagine that that was his way of saying a proper goodbye.

Chapter Text

Lady Brienne yet lives, Sansa wrote. Though she has declined to write on her own behalf, and has left the task to me. You have done a fine job in showing her exactly your worth by continuing to support the madness in Kings Landing. Please refrain from giving my regards to your sister, though I know you are unable to deny her anything, and I expect that request to be disregarded.

She reread the message and, satisfied, sent it off to the rookery. Her conversation with Brienne yesterday had left her feeling somewhat rattled, and so she had delayed writing the response until this morning, when she could have a clearer head.

She had no reason to doubt the truth of her sworn sword’s story, but it was the strained affection and the confused longing in Brienne’s voice that gave Sansa pause. It was difficult to reconcile such a glowing picture of Jaime Lannister with the man that she remembered from when she was a girl. She had seen very little of the Kingslayer when she was in Kings Landing, and she had known even less, except that he was absurdly handsome and very proud. He had frightened her, speaking too sarcastically and looking too sharp. He and Cersei together were a picture of perfection that always made Sansa feel off-balanced and ugly. He had been kind on a few occasions on the road as they traveled from Winterfell. Gallant like a knight should be, but she had annoyed him with her obvious fear of him. She had been so afraid of everyone after Lady had been killed.

He frightened her still, if only because Cersei frightened her.

But the image of the handsome Kingslayer jumping into a bear pit one-handed to protect Brienne was one that had stayed with her all through the night. She knew how easy it was to fall for a man so handsome and brave, but Joffrey had never been brave. She had only wanted him to be, because she wanted her life to be as grand as a song, and in her desperation she had ignored every sign she should have seen that Joffrey was not even the hero of his own story, and certainly was not the hero of hers. Brienne was much older than Sansa had been when she had those foolish dreams, and she didn’t seem nearly so foolish as Sansa had been. She reminded Sansa of her mother sometimes. Reasonable and practical and strong, but with a softness that came through in her smile. She would make a good mother. Firm but kind. Stern but loving. Was that the sort of person who would fall for empty charms?  Or was she right? Was Jaime Lannister more than what the world had made of him?

Sansa didn’t trust people to make judgements for her anymore. She would have to judge the Kingslayer for herself. Brienne’s words could only go so far, because anyone could see that Brienne wasn’t objective about him, and Sansa knew better than anyone that love made people see things that weren’t there.

She supposed that her letter to Jaime Lannister may have been harsher if she hadn’t spent much of the night wondering what Brienne saw in him, but it was too late to fix it. And perhaps harshness wouldn’t have served, anyway. His letter to her was perfectly cordial, and her own wry response set a friendly enough tone. She wondered if he would bother to respond.

Later that night, after dealing with the concerns of the smallfolk, the continued production of several new glass gardens, and the question of where to store the surplus food for when winter began in earnest, Sansa was pleased to find herself in the lord’s chambers with Robb and Jon. For the past few days, Sansa had given Jon space to settle with the truth about his parentage. She had promised to be there for him, and she had offered him whatever he might need, but he had been glum and listless even so. Tonight, he seemed a bit lighter, and she was glad to see him smile when she left Brienne at the door and entered the solar. He made room for her on the small couch before the fire between he and Robb, and Sansa settled in with a happy sigh, accepting a goblet of wine from her brother.

“What are we drinking about, then?” she asked, trying to sound spirited rather than concerned.

“Oh, everything,” Robb said. “Jon’s just spent the past hour catching me up on the dire situation beyond the Wall. And here I assumed that the Lannisters were our most pressing enemies.”

“No,” Sansa admitted. “They aren’t. Compared to what Jon has seen, the Lannisters are nothing.”

“Not nothing,” Jon said, rubbing at his face, that tired gesture that he did so often. “But easier to kill, certainly.”

“We’ve also been discussing Bolton loyalists and the possibility of the Free Folk rejecting our laws,” Robb said dryly. “Anything else you can think of that might ruin our happiness here?”

“Littlefinger,” Sansa and Jon said in unison. Jon smiled a bit, looking at her, meeting her eyes. She realized then that he had been avoiding them. She wondered if he remembered what he said to her the other night. She had assumed that he would forget it the next morning, after the drink had worn off, but maybe he remembered and was embarrassed. She wondered, too, how to tell him that she did still love him, and that he would always be the man who fought for her. She could just speak it plainly, but…no. Maybe she couldn’t. It didn’t feel right to say it aloud, although she wasn’t sure why. Maybe she just wasn’t built for those open displays of affection anymore.

“Littlefinger,” Robb said. He rolled his eyes. “Is he a concern? Or merely an annoyance? He seems harmless enough, if a bit…bow-y and scrape-y. I certainly don’t like the way he looks at you, but can’t we just...ask him to leave?”

“Littlefinger is a concern,” Sansa answered, hiding her amusement at Robb’s dismissiveness. “But he’s good at pretending not to be. That’s how he gets people to trust him long enough so he can put his knife in their back.”

Robb and Jon both winced at that, and Sansa couldn’t help a small laugh, apologetic. She put her hand on Jon’s arm, and she leaned against Robb’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but Robb and Jon were both laughing now, too. Robb covered his face with his hands, and he groaned.

“All right,” he said. “Littlefinger. What does he want? Why is he still here?”

“He wants to marry me,” Sansa said.

The laughter died.

She took another sip of her wine, and she looked between them. Robb looked vaguely as if someone had punched him. She wondered if it was the association with any wedding that made him look so harassed, or if it was just the idea of that particular man wanting to marry her. Jon, though. There was no mistaking Jon. He was murderous.

“Absolutely not,” Robb said.

“You asked what he wants, and I’m telling you. He wants to marry me. He’s told me himself. He wanted to marry me and be made king and queen in the north, but they chose Jon before he could get me to agree, and now you’re back. That’s why he’s a concern. He knows what he wants, and I know he’s capable of going to any lengths to get it. He…” She took a sharper, deeper breath than she meant to, and her lungs burned with it. “Aunt Lysa. She saw him kiss me when we were in the Vale. I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t have kissed him. But Aunt Lysa saw, and she didn’t believe me when I told her what happened, and she tried to push me out the moon door. Littlefinger talked her down. He saved me. And then he pushed her.” She looked between Robb and Jon desperately, willing them to understand. “I didn’t want him to do it. But I let him, because I was afraid. And I helped him when the lords of the Vale began to question him, because I didn’t know what else to do. And I married Ramsay Bolton because he convinced me that that was how we were going to get Winterfell back. I knew even then that he wanted me. That Ramsay would only be temporary. I assumed he would find some way to kill Ramsay, too. I would have married him, then, because I didn’t think there was another way. I wanted Winterfell back. I wanted to be at home.”

“Sansa,” Robb said, cutting her off with a gentle, comforting murmur. He put an arm across her shoulders and pulled her close. She could feel he and Jon making eye contact over her head, but she closed her eyes and let herself rest against the solid weight of her brother at her side. Jon’s hand took hers, his fingers squeezing, his wordless support comforting. Sansa breathed. She regained control of herself. She allowed herself this moment, this weak moment, and then it had to be over. She straightened up again, and she continued, more slowly and more composed.

“We need to keep him close, at least for now, because otherwise we won’t ever know what he wants. At least if he thinks that I support him, and that I might marry him if he arranges it right, he’ll tell me some of his plans, and we’ll be able to figure out some idea of the rest. Until we know how to stop him…”

“A good, clean sword cut should do it,” Jon said. “It worked for a craven worm like Janos Slynt. It will work for one like Littlefinger, too.”

Sansa looked at Jon. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t light with drink like he had been the other night. He was furious. His shoulders were tense with it. His eyes were blazing, reflected by the firelight in a way that reminded Sansa that he wasn’t her brother. He was her cousin. Her Targaryen cousin.

For a moment, she didn’t care if it was the Targaryen madness. She ached to hear that he had been the one to kill that awful, frog-faced Janos Slynt. She had prayed for it, once, that someone would throw him down and cut off his head. And someone had.  

Good, she thought, savagely. He deserved to die, and so does Littlefinger, and so does Cersei, and Jon will kill all of them if I ask.

She pushed that thought away swiftly, horrified with herself, like she had felt after feeding Ramsay to his dogs. Not regretful, exactly. She could never regret removing such a monster from the world. But terrified of what it meant for her, that she could relish in so much pain. Like she had been touched deep inside herself by any one of the horrible jailers she had known in her life. Learned too much from them. Became too much like them.

No. No, she wasn’t like them. She would not allow herself to go down that dark path. Allowing evil people to continue to do evil because you were too afraid of what stopping them meant for your own heart or honor…that was evil, too. She’d hated those people in Kings Landing who refused to stand up to the king. She’d hated those people who stood by and watched. She had to be one of them for a time, but now she didn’t anymore, and she would not allow evil men like Littlefinger to keep winning. Hesitation and guilt and a need to do things honorably were why people like Littlefinger kept winning. They were weaknesses, and if there was one thing Littlefinger was very good at, it was exploiting those weaknesses.

“Like it or not, we still have need of him,” Sansa admitted. “He’s Lord Protector of the Vale. Not a well-liked one, but connected enough. If we kill him without a trial, the lords of the Vale will be forced to respond, and they make up the bulk of our remaining army.”

“We don’t need any army so badly that you’re going to marry him,” Robb insisted. He hesitated. Unable to tell. “Unless that’s what you want?”

“It isn’t,” Sansa said quickly. She turned and looked at Jon, and she saw that he somehow looked even angrier than he already had. “It isn’t.” She squeezed his fingers again, tighter. “But I can handle him for now. I know how to talk to him. Better me than either of you.”

Jon shook his head.

“If he makes you uncomfortable...”

“I can handle it,” Sansa said. She met his eyes. “Jon. I promise.”

Jon returned the pressure of her fingers at last, and he weakly smiled.

“I never thought I would see this,” Robb said suddenly. He was watching them, Sansa realized, and she took her hand from Jon’s swiftly, as if burned. Robb continued, unnoticing. “The two of you getting along. It’s...more than I ever expected to see.”

Sansa hid her confusion in her goblet as she took another sip. She tipped the conversation in some other direction, and Robb and Jon took it from there. Sansa was warm and safe between them, and she should have been enjoying it, but she couldn’t. The wine made her feel sick the way it used to when she was a girl, this low pain in her stomach.

She had snatched her hand away.

Ridiculous, the things that could make it obvious. She had been so sure that she knew her own heart. She had been so sure that she understood. But she snatched her hand away like she had done something wrong in clinging to Jon, and that made it plain.

There was something wrong inside her. Wrong and touched by Cersei, more than any of the others.

She never would have snatched her hand away from Robb.

Chapter Text

She was queen again, but it was better this time. She ruled alone, without any man claiming her body but the man she would choose. There was no king beside her with a crown on his unworthy head. There was no stinking ogre of a man demanding her kisses and her pretended fidelity while he soiled their bed with whores and her own servants.

She reminded herself, almost every night, that it was better than it used to be. It was what she had always wanted. She was satisfied. She had to be satisfied. Otherwise, what had it all been for?

It didn’t work.

It wasn’t enough. There were still wars to be won. There were still enemies surrounding her. She wasn’t safe yet. That was what she needed. She was sure of it. She hated to acknowledge the truth of Jaime’s constant caution, but sometimes she could admit it. Staring at the ceiling, trying to force herself to sleep. She was surrounded by enemies who were kept at bay only though fear of what she might do if she were provoked. It wouldn’t last forever. She would run out of tricks. They would stop believing her bluffs. And then they would come for her.

When she slept, she dreamed, and when she dreamed, she saw their faces. Her dead children. Her dead father. Her grotesque, mocking little brother. And Jaime. Jaime whole and beautiful and hers. He may as well have been dead now, too, for all he resembled the man she had loved. In her dreams, they were all tinged with green. Roiling green. Smoke and screams and green above all else, calling to her. But not Jaime. Jaime was always gold.

There was little enough left of her twin when she was awake. His gold now was only in her memory; even his hair had somehow gotten darker, like the sheen of him had been tainted somehow by some lesser color. He looked less like her image in her mirror every day, even with her shorter hair and the lines that were beginning to show on her face, which matched the lines that he had started getting first. There were streaks of silver in his hair where hers remained golden, and there was silver too in the beard that he let grow even though she told him she hated the feel of it against her skin.

Not that that had mattered of late. When they did come together, she was rarely looking for something as sweet as kisses, and she wasn’t sure he was looking for anything. He came to her when she called, like he always had, and he fucked her when she wanted him to, and she was searching for him in those moments but could never manage to find the man she wanted. He had been different before. It was more than just his lost hand, though of course that was part of it. It was something deeper, something more essential at his core that had changed in a way she still couldn’t understand.

She was frightened of this new Jaime. Not in the way she had been frightened of her father and his piercing gazes or the way she had been frightened of Robert and his rages. She was frightened of Jaime’s quiet and the distance in his eyes when they fucked. She was frightened of the way he reacted to her orders with a frown and a furrowed brow, but never argued even when he plainly disagreed.

He is resigned to me, she thought once, in a moment of clarity, and she forced the thought from her mind and refused to acknowledge it thereafter, though of course it rattled there, and she could not have peace. She had been resigned to Robert, once. She knew what it looked like. The lack of passion in his eyes. The way he looked at her with disgust more than he looked at her with love. She at least had fought back. Argued. Hated Robert so obviously that even the drunken idiot had had to acknowledge it. Jaime didn’t even have the decency to do that. He stayed, and he endured, and he stared through her until she wanted to scream at him to do something.

She had his loyalty for now, even if she no longer had anything else. She must keep it if her victory was going to remain unspoiled. He had always been her twin, her mirror, the man who could be counted on to do what her woman’s frame could not, and even without his sword hand, he still commanded respect in her army. She needed him. She needed him. She had loved him once, and she was sure that she could love him again, as soon as there were no more enemies, and she could find whatever it was that she hungered for. This thing that had been missing, whatever peace she seemed to be seeking in her dreams.

She just needed to secure his loyalty until then. Make him lose some of that cold distance that had snuck into his expression. They only lay together seldom, and only in the first few weeks after he had returned, before she tired of pretending that it was what she wanted. But she supposed she could insist upon it more often, and she could have another child. That might bring him back. Knowing that she was pregnant…or she could even just say she was. The possibility of being a real father to their next child would catch him. He had always been jealous of Robert, getting to show the children the affection that it wasn’t safe for him to show. He had pretended not to care, but she had seen him when Myrcella and Tommen were young. Playing with them when he thought she wasn’t watching. He looked ridiculous, engaging in children’s games while wearing the Kingsguard armor and white cloak. But even so, they had almost looked like a family. She had called the children away, afraid it would be too obvious, and Jaime had been annoyed with her. She had always liked him best like that; she had hated the softness he sometimes let show. Like something embarrassing he should know to keep hidden but couldn’t sometimes. It was a weakness she couldn’t abide in men.

But if it was something he craved, if it was something he needed to keep him loyal, she could give it to him. She could give him more. Marriage. A baby. She was queen of Westeros. When their enemies were gone, who would be left to tell them that the Lannisters weren’t divine, as the Targaryens had claimed when they wed brother to sister for generations?

He would never leave her then. She knew Jaime. She knew him. He was different now, but a man like Jaime couldn’t change who he was. He had never taken a step that wasn’t to secure her happiness or his ability to be beside her. That was all this was, the detachment that she sensed in him. He wanted more proof that she loved him, because Jaime had never been satisfied with what an average man would be happy with. He always wanted more from her.

Well, she would give it to him. Whatever she needed to do to keep him loyal, she would do. A pregnancy could be faked, and if she didn’t fall pregnant in time to make the lie a truth, she had lost children in the womb before. Jaime would have no reason not to believe it. And he would be broken-hearted, and he would worry for her, and he would be insufferable, but it would be better than losing him to the absurd conscience that he insisted on pretending he had.

The Starks were growing in power in the north. First that murderous whore Sansa escaping from Bolton’s clutches and then raising an army with her bastard brother and taking back their home. They grew stronger every day, and now there were rumors that Bolton had allowed two Starks to slip past his grasp: it hardly seemed possible, but Robb Stark had been recrowned King in the North.

Jaime had frowned and said nothing when she raved about it to he and Qyburn, but she knew he had always hated The Red Wedding. That absurd nickname. The stories that followed it. The brutality of it. He hated aligning with the Freys, too, as if he felt he was too good to assist their armies and help them with their Lannister-led aims. Of course the Lannisters were better than the Freys. But a wise man used the allies that were easiest to control, and that was exactly what the Freys were (or had been, before someone apparently killed them, anyway. She was still waiting for more confirmation of that).

That was the problem, wasn’t it? The problem with Jaime. She had been avoiding it as long as possible out of some loyalty or lingering feeling for him, but it could no longer be ignored: Jaime was not their father’s son. He had none of Tywin’s cleverness, and none of his boldness, and none of his vision. No, that had always been her, though their father never wanted to see it. She had always been the one with the ambition, the drive, the understanding of court politics and the willingness to play at court politics. These days she preferred the elegance of a blunt instrument like wildfire and a whole sept full of her enemies, or the efficiency of a monster like Gregor Clegane, but for years she played the game as subtly and as carefully as anyone ever had. Tywin never gave her as much credit for that as he should have, always trying to figure out why Jaime refused to fall in line with whatever he wanted.

He’s not the heir you want, she wanted to scream at him when he was alive. She wanted to scream it to his corpse, now. She wanted him to live again so she could show him everything she had accomplished. Would he smile at her? Would he be proud of her? Or would he keep trying to prod her idiot twin into having a little ambition and finally giving up those childish fucking dreams of knighthood?

She knew what the answer was. She could have her dreams and her fantasies of her father finally recognizing her worth, but she knew the truth. It would still be Jaime. After all, after everything. Jaime was the firstborn son, and that was what mattered to Tywin. As much of an idiot as he was. As little as he cared about their legacy. Still it would be him.

She had removed Jaime from the field years ago with her cunt and her promises of forever. He followed her blindly into the Kingsguard, cutting away any path to a future lived for Tywin’s goals, and that should have been the end of it. Tywin should have known he had lost. But even after she told him the truth about she and Jaime, even after everything, still Tywin refused to accept that Jaime was not the heir he wanted.

Cersei finished the wine in her glass.  She paced across the room, and then back. She needed a clear head, so she wouldn’t drink any more, though she found she craved it more than she used to. The past years had not been kind.

I’m glad Tyrion killed him, she allowed herself to think. A vicious smile cut across her face. She watched it in the mirror across the room. Her reflection still troubled her most days, with her long hair gone and her short hair still not familiar enough to avoid the shock every time she looked and saw herself. But the smile looked good on her. The mirth in it. The genuine amusement. Yes, I’m glad his last moments were knowing that Tyrion was the one who killed him.

It was funny, actually, the more she thought about it. She had been sure at the time that she was devastated by her father's murder, but why? She wasn’t some child who still needed him. Sansa Stark had screamed and sobbed when they took her father’s head, but what had Cersei done? Would she have begged for his life if Tyrion had demanded it? No. She didn’t think so. She couldn’t imagine standing in front of Tyrion and begging for anything anymore, let alone the life of her father. Tywin would never have done the same for her. He wasn’t that sort of father.

Yes, she thought suddenly, feeling more settled. A child would make Jaime stay. A child. A marriage. Fatherhood and the chance to be a husband to her. He didn’t want much. Tywin’s beloved heir was a simple man, after all. What was it that he said when he pushed that Stark boy from the tower? She still regretted the emptiness in Catelyn Stark’s eyes when they spoke over poor Brandon’s bed. She wished that Jaime hadn’t done the foolish thing, even if it was also the only way to make sure the boy didn’t talk. She wished at least that Jaime had killed him.

The things I do for love. That was it. And that was him, Jaime. He would do any horrible thing as long as it pleased her. He longed for her and wanted her and loved her. He would kill any man who stood in her way. Any woman. Any child. She wanted power, and he would wrest it from anyone else in order to see her satisfied. That was the man she had loved once, and the man she was sure she could remember how to love again, once the wars were done. Once she had what she needed, and everything started to make sense again. They could start anew. She would love him. She would.

Or, if she couldn’t. If she didn’t. At least she would have him. Wholly, the way she used to, before he lost his hand and his courage with it. That fierceness that she used to crave. He would protect her with that same spirit that he used to have when he thought a child was on the way, whether or not a child actually was. Yes, a child was the way to do it.

It would be easier if he didn’t continue to act so strange and removed from her. This detachment she couldn’t stop him from showing. It had happened sometimes, before, but it had never been so difficult to pull him back. She had learned early exactly how to get him ready for her. It was a talent that they both excelled at. Stoking the fires of each other’s anger and finally coming together in a passionate display. It was always best like that, when they were too angry and too desperate to do much more than bar the door and tear each other’s clothes off. That was how she liked him best. She knew it must have been how he liked her best, too.

Not anymore. Jaime was slow to rise to anger, and when he did, it often looked too much like disgust. When she wanted him, he was ready for her, as he always had been, but there was a removal there, a self-hatred that only made her angrier.

The more time passed, the less she liked the idea of a child. He would never leave her alone if he thought she was with child. He would grow even more carefully detached. More worried about her. More delicate. No less self-hating.

She didn’t know how to fix the Jaime problem, but luckily there were many more that she could solve. The Starks would keep, up in their frozen northern fortress, especially with winter well on its way. Qyburn’s spies said that they hadn’t called any armies or raised any banners, so perhaps they had learned a thing or two and had decided not to attack her. She could deal with them after the other armies had been taken care of.

“Highgarden,” she told Jaime. She was standing on the map floor as she said it, and Jaime stood outside it, between two pillars, looking down at her feet and the country she strode across with a look of distaste for which she could have slapped him.

“Olenna Tyrell has hardly any force left to her,” Jaime said.

“She has Dorne,” Cersei said. A fact that seemed impossible, given the long-standing enmity between Highgarden and the Dornish, but if there was anyone who could soothe centuries of discord for the sake of revenge, it was Olenna.

“Does she?” Jaime asked. Cersei could not tell what that meant, if it was doubt or a genuine question. Her blood rose the way it always did when he was deliberately obtuse with her.

“We need Highgarden. Without their food, the people will starve, and they will revolt. I know you weren’t here last time it happened, but I would not like to see another bread riot. The Reach is our best option. If Highgarden is so undefended, surely you’ll be able to take it. Even a one-handed former Kingsguard can manage that.

“Highgarden,” Jaime agreed finally. He set his mouth in a grim look of disdain. “To which grasping acolyte will you be rewarding the Tyrell seat, then? The Mountain, perhaps? Or Qyburn? He could have a whole castle in which to be unsettling. Away from here.”

Cersei smiled. At least he was still there sometimes, even if she couldn’t reach him. Jaime, her Jaime, sharp and murderous and hating. Her twin. Her mirror.

“Highgarden will belong to the crown until we can find a suitable lord to fill its seat,” she answered. “Perhaps your little pet, if it learns to serve its rightful master.” Jaime’s eyes flickered to hers, and she saw something change within them. Terror, she thought. Why was he afraid? She faltered, but did not stop speaking. “Though perhaps not. Last I checked, your mercenary requires gold to be your friend, and we need all the gold we can get to fund these ridiculous wars.” She watched his expression fade back to neutrality. What are you hiding, brother?

“Bronn in Highgarden,” Jaime said. He still seemed a bit shaken. She would need to watch him more carefully. He was keeping secrets from her now. “Father will crawl from his crypt to take the throne back.”

“He can try,” Cersei said. “But no man will be able to pry me from this seat.” She smiled at his sharp look. Yes, brother, she thought. That was a warning.

Jaime understood, for once. He stared at her. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was. Wondering what had happened. Wondering how to get back to each other.

Whatever answer there was, he didn’t find it. He bowed, minutely. Too minutely, maybe, if he wanted to afford her proper respect, but Jaime had always been about his little rebellions with Robert, and she wouldn’t take them from him now.

“Your grace,” he said, bitter and wry, before he took his leave. He would need a week at least to prepare the excursion. Maybe he would come to her tonight. He looked utterly disgusted, utterly furious with her. That was always when he wanted her most. It had been long enough that she might even let him have her.

When he was gone, she would have to evaluate. If Jaime could no longer be counted on, she would need to find someone else. She was loath to do it, but alliances could be made with a few whispered promises. She need never act on them. Qyburn, she knew, had been wanting her to branch out. Likely he wanted to do it to reduce some of Jaime’s power, but she would let him believe it was working if it would make him happy. She owed him so much, after all.

She turned and looked at The Mountain. Standing there, silent behind her, as he always was. There were few people in the kingdom who would be able to say that they breathed more easily with a creature like Gregor Clegane at their back, but there weren’t many in the kingdom like her in general. She was powerful with The Mountain behind her. No man could stand against her and live, as long as he was hers. She had felt that way about Jaime once, but then Jaime had lost his hand, and he couldn’t protect her anymore.

She turned to watch her brother’s retreat. The defeated slump to his shoulders. The grim, plodding quality of his walk. Her teeth were grinding together again. Something would have to be done about Jaime once he was back with the food from Highgarden.

Or perhaps, with him gone, she would remember why it was that she had been so convinced they were meant to be together.

Chapter Text

Robb didn’t waste any time when he received the missive from the dragon queen; he came to the table for breakfast one morning, still rumpled with sleep, clutching the scroll in his hand. He was trailed by Davos, who had remained on as Hand despite the change of kings. It still plainly made him uncomfortable to hold such a position, especially now that he barely knew the king in question, but he had been a good choice, and Jon was glad he was staying. He and Sansa and Davos had all done as much as they could to make the transition easier for Robb, and there had been no major disasters yet.

Jon had started to feel like things were settling. That was probably his first mistake: optimism.

They still hadn’t made any decisions regarding how to reveal the fact that he was Lyanna’s son. Sansa had been stalling Littlefinger as they waited for word on the Blackfish’s progress in the Vale, and Jon thought she might have just been stalling generally; as much as she wanted to pretend that it wasn’t, the subject of his parentage was a complication that the Starks didn’t need. Robb was king again, and so far he had been performing his duties admirably, but Northmen had long memories, and they had not forgotten Robb’s failures. Jon’s truth on its own might not present much of a problem, but it wasn’t the only thing that they were dealing with.

Jon still thought that he should leave before the problem truly became one, but no one seemed to want to hear that. Robb glared and Sansa scoffed, and together they treated his occasional threats of running away with no more credence than they would have given a child. It made him prickly, but it made him warm, too. They had all become so unused to expressing themselves. Maybe that was why refusing to let him leave, even if they did it in fairly curt ways, felt like an expression of affection.

If he really meant to do it, he would just go in the night. Take Tormund and a few others and head back up to the Wall, or go south to some warmer place, like he had planned before Sansa arrived at the Wall and talked him into taking back Winterfell. Perhaps he could try and find Arya. But instead he continued to float the idea, only to sheepishly retract it whenever Sansa got upset with him for it.

He didn’t truly want to go. That felt like a secret for some reason, though it wasn’t one. He wasn’t used to expressing things he wanted anymore. It seemed like the smartest thing to do, the right thing to do, and that meant that he should do it. But he didn’t want to.

Robb’s grim expression when he arrived at the breakfast table was enough to put off any further thoughts of leaving. Robb had been so oddly passive since his return. He examined everything, listened to his advisors, delivered orders, all of it in a voice that didn’t shake but didn’t have any real strength, either. It was almost a relief to see the fire back in his eyes.

“We’ve received a raven,” he said, holding up the scroll. “From Tyrion Lannister.”

Sansa frowned, which wasn’t the only sign that she was upset by the news; her hand curved around the knife beside her plate, as if she meant to stab through the paper if Robb tried to hand it to her.

“What about?” she asked coolly.

He can try and take her back, Jon thought. He had liked Tyrion once, but if he thought he could assert some claim on Sansa…

“Tyrion is apparently serving as Hand to the daughter of Aerys Targaryen,” Robb replied. “Who has decided to come out of exile and name herself queen. She’s already landed at Dragonstone with an army. And three dragons.

“Dragons,” Sansa muttered, in the same tone one might bemoan of rats. She used the knife in her hand to butter a roll. It didn’t shake, but she seemed to release it with some effort afterward.

“They write to ask for your allegiance,” Davos said politely, because Robb was glaring down at the letter again.

“To bend the knee to the rightful ruler of the seven kingdoms,” Robb elaborated.

“Cersei Lannister is the rightful ruler of the seven kingdoms,” Sansa said idly. Her fingers danced nervously along the surface of the roll as she began to pick it apart. Jon pretended he wasn’t watching, and he pretended he wasn’t worried. “Much as I loathe her. This dragon queen can win her crown back, but it’s so like Tyrion to smother something like a conquering in pretty technicalities.”

Jon couldn’t help but grin, and she made an affronted face, like she thought he was laughing at her.

“No, you’re right,” he said quickly. “The Targaryens lost the throne, and the Baratheons took it. She must take it if she wants it back. But I imagine she grew up hearing differently.”

“It helps to fight for something when you treat it as a birthright,” Sansa admitted, indicating Winterfell around them with her free hand. She took a delicate, thoughtful nibble of her bread. “The dragons, though…that doesn’t exactly speak of peaceful intent. Her invitation is probably more of a threat.”

“Of course it’s a threat,” Robb said. He finally sat down at the table. “She intends to get me to Dragonstone where I can’t refuse her, and force me to bend the knee.”

“So you don’t go,” Sansa said. Robb was already shaking his head.

“The next invitation won’t be so politely worded. If I go now, at least we’ll have responded early, so she’ll think we're willing to indulge her. And I won’t bend the knee.”

Sansa frowned again, and she glanced at Jon, who briefly quirked his eyebrows in agreement.

“She’ll kill you,” Sansa said.

“She wants allies, not enemies,” Robb pointed out.

“If you don’t bend the knee…”

“Not every queen is Cersei,” Robb reminded her gently. “And not every king is Joffrey. She’s a girl our own age who is far from any home she’s ever known, advised by a man like Tyrion Lannister. I need to meet her and speak with her. I need her to understand that I won’t bend, but that doesn’t mean we can’t give her aid in taking Kings Landing. And there are important things we need aid with, as well.”

“Dragons might help against the dead,” Jon admitted reluctantly. He wondered what she was like. She would be his aunt, he supposed. Odd to have an aunt of an age with you, but it probably wasn’t so uncommon. He tried to imagine what she would look like. She was his family. He found that he couldn’t picture her. Robb, when he had been trying to console Jon, had said that Ned was still his father because Ned was the one who had raised him, and that was true. It sent a shiver of excitement through him to know that he might have been her nephew, if things had gone differently. But that was all. This queen from across the sea was his family, but she was less his family than his cousins were, and that wouldn’t change.

“Davos and I have already been discussing it,” Robb said. “And we think the only choice is to send me.”

“You’re the king,” Sansa reminded him.

“Yes,” Robb said.

“And you don’t think that going yourself is…a bit bold?” she asked.

“Idiotic, you mean,” Robb said, fondly, his good humor shining through in his expression.

“You said it,” Sansa pointed out. She was smiling too, but she wasn’t even trying to hide her worry.

“I would send Jon as a representative, but we don’t know how she’s going to react to a nephew. The mad king was paranoid, and until we know that his daughter isn’t the same, it stands to reason that we keep Jon away. Plus, if we sent Jon and word got out that we sent a secret Targaryen to treat with another Targaryen...”

“They would assume the worst,” Davos finished apologetically. Jon nodded, because he understood, though he wished it didn’t sting quite so much.

“And I’m not sending you,” Robb continued, looking at Sansa sharply, like he knew she was going to offer next. “Not when Tyrion Lannister is there. Not when he might try and press a claim for your hand.”

“What about the two of us?” Sansa asked, gesturing to Jon.

“If you arrive at Dragonstone, and Tyrion tries to claim that your marriage remains valid, what do you think Jon will do?” Robb asked. And, well, it was a good point, even if Jon was embarrassed to have been seen so clearly.

“I am capable of diplomacy,” he argued quietly, which made both his cousins laugh, just a bit.

“I know,” Robb said. “But the point remains. We need Sansa here, safe. It makes the most sense for me to go, and for Sansa to stay behind and rule. There should be a Stark in Winterfell, and it should be you, and Jon, to keep the peace.”

Sansa met Jon’s eyes, as if to check if he had heard the hesitation before Robb said “and Jon”. Of course Jon had heard it. He knew exactly what Robb was going to say next.

“You think we should tell everyone the truth before you leave,” he guessed, and Robb ducked his head to control his expression before he finally looked up, met Jon’s eyes, and nodded.

“I think we should announce to the lords that we have just received confirmation of your identity, yes,” he said.

“Littlefinger knows there’s something going on,” Sansa admitted. “He won’t be put off the scent for much longer. And if he does find out, and if he manages to frame it so that it looks like it was a secret that we have been keeping…”

Easy to imagine, yes. Jon had gotten used to Sansa’s grim predictions of what Littlefinger could and would do, and he knew that it was probably possible. He didn’t know how Littlefinger would find out, but whatever terrible things there were to say about Littlefinger, there was also the begrudging admittance that the man had a way of learning the exact things that his enemies were trying to keep from him.

“We should get ahead of it,” Robb said reluctantly. They both looked at Jon, then, and he realized that they were waiting for his opinion. He didn’t quite see why it mattered. That emptiness still yawned inside him. He was still terrified. But they were right; it was the smartest play. He couldn’t figure out why his feelings should be a factor at all.

“Whatever we have to do,” he said. He could feel his brow furrowing with his frown.

“If you aren’t ready,” Sansa started.

“Or if you want to keep it secret,” Robb agreed, slightly more reluctant.

“Whatever we have to do,” Jon insisted gently. His siblings—his cousins—exchanged a single glance, and then Robb nodded.

“We’ll tell them before I leave,” Robb said. “As part of the explanation for why it has to be me.”

“What if they want him gone?” Sansa asked.

“Then I leave,” Jon pointed out.

“Not while Littlefinger is still around,” Robb said. Which, well, was also a fair point. Sansa was frowning deeply between both of them.

“Do you want to leave, Jon?” she asked. He thought she was just being snide at first, but then he saw that she was asking him a real question.

Did he want to leave? No. The answer was immediate. No, of course he didn’t want to leave. It was his home. His family. Robb and Sansa. Even Davos, Brienne, Podrick. His Free Folk friends. Sometimes he craved the simplicity of the land beyond the Wall, but not so he’d ever give this up.

“No,” he answered. “But if it’s for the best…”

“It isn’t,” Sansa said. “Do you want to stay here? With us? In Winterfell?”

More than anything, he realized.

“Yes,” he said.

“Good,” she replied. She squared her shoulders in the way she always did when she was ready to fight. “Littlefinger will see it as an opportunity. He’ll assume I resent you. He’ll assume that Robb left you to watch over me because he doesn’t trust me to rule. He’s convinced that neither of you have faith in me, or maybe he’s just trying to make me think that he thinks that. I’m not sure. Either way, his main play is to set us against each other. With Robb gone, he’ll make a move. Will you help me?”

“Of course,” Jon answered.

“I know it isn’t your thing. I know you don’t like to be so underhanded. But if…”

“If it protects my family, I will do it,” Jon interrupted. Perhaps he answered too sharply; Sansa glanced at him, afterward, and he couldn’t read her expression. Robb didn’t seem to notice. He simply looked exhausted as he scanned the letter again.

Do you worry about what happened to you? He wondered as he watched his brother. Do you worry that you came back wrong? Do you worry about what you feel?

No, he thought. Robb is worried about running the realm and keeping his family safe. Robb left a boy and came back a man. What did you come back as?

Chapter Text

Left alone in her solar, Sansa sat to respond to the letter she had received from Jaime Lannister the previous day. She hadn’t planned on it, initially; it was an odd letter. He compared her to her mother and father in a manner that seemed less than favorable, but he also thanked her earnestly for delivering the news about Brienne.

I hope my sword isn’t causing her too much trouble among the northerners, he had written. Tell her to cut the rubies out and hack at the lion’s head until it half resembles a wolf. It only half resembles a lion as it is. And it may keep her safe.

It was easy to see the broad, flashing grin of the Kingslayer behind those words. Wry and pretending at politeness while mocking her family. But Sansa read it again, now, after that breakfast meeting with Robb and Jon.

Jon had been so fierce when he said that he would do anything to help his family, and it made Sansa think of Jaime. Not the man she only barely knew, but the man from Brienne’s story. Sansa was still unsure if she could trust her sworn sword's judgement regarding the man Brienne plainly loved, but each letter from him seemed designed to chip away at her notion of the fearsome Kingslayer. His care for Brienne was as plain as Brienne’s care for him. It must have been horrible, being captured together. Suffering together. Perhaps it had bound them the way it had bound she and Theon. Hatred giving way to desperation. Enmity giving way to affection. She had feared it one-sided on Brienne’s part, but it wasn’t, was it?

Brienne said that Jaime Lannister had done all he had for love of his family. Jon had made her think of him with his grim determination to do the same. It blended together, mixed up in her mind. And besides, Jaime appeared to have abandoned some of that devotion: his response to her barb about Cersei had been plain. My sister will not know about these letters. It would not do either of us any good, and I have no wish to make things more difficult for you or for Brienne. It must have been a risk, continuing to write. Cersei was a paranoid woman, and she would have spies everywhere. How had he gotten away with it so far?

If he was lying, if Cersei was at all involved, then it was obviously some trap. Some trick to get Sansa to reveal something. Sansa couldn’t see Cersei’s hands on either letter, though. The content of them was too artless, and she didn’t think Cersei would bother to go to any great length to disguise her intention. Cersei was more about making people fear her. To say nothing of the fact that Sansa could tell that the letters had been written by a man who could no longer use his dominant hand. She tried a few words with her weaker hand and quickly abandoned the premise. How long had it taken Jaime to practice even writing as well as he could now? How long had it taken him to write the response to her letter? And yet he had, and he had asked again about Brienne.

Any further news would be welcome, if she does not deign to write me directly.

She reread his letter again, and her amusement and bemusement both grew together. There were so many things that needed to be done, and yet she was alone in her solar, thinking over how to respond to a mostly friendly letter from one of her family’s biggest enemies.

Robb was leaving again, and he would not be leaving alone. Davos would be going with him, of course, but he would need men to guard him and make sure they reached Dragonstone safely. Sansa wanted to be involved in deciding who it would be. The Blackfish was back in the Vale, already beginning the process of winning the lords over to his side and turning them against Littlefinger. Jon would be staying with her, to guard her and hopefully help her bait Littlefinger into making a move. There weren’t many other people she trusted.

Your concern for the safety of my sworn sword is welcome, if misguided, she finally wrote. If you are truly concerned, perhaps you will remind your sister that the lady stands between me and any harm. Brienne has far more to worry about from the lions than from the wolves.

That seemed good. She allowed the ink to dry as she considered what else to say. She understood why Brienne would not want to respond to his letters, even beyond the discomfort she plainly felt to be the focus of his regard; it would be difficult for Brienne to bandy words about with him. She was so direct. She had said many times to Sansa that she didn’t have a head for politics. She was like Jon in that way: better than she claimed to be, but awkward and uncertain with the more delicate aspects.

Thank you also for your kind words about my parents, she wrote, trying for a tone as sarcastic and light as his letter had been. I am sure they would be pleased to know they made such an impact on you that their impressions linger long after they are gone. People tell me Jon and I look much like them. I always tell those people that we are more aware of the dangers, and that we are far more prepared to face them.

There. That was good. Airy enough to match his tone, but filled with warning as well. If Cersei was dictating Jaime’s letters, hopefully she would understand that it would not be easy to get whatever it was she wanted from Sansa Stark.

Robb had changed in a thousand ways since he had returned, so it was almost refreshing to find that he took no more care with preparations than he used to. He still seemed baffled by the idea that there needed to be any fuss, as if he had assumed he would just mount a horse and strike off on his own toward Dragonstone.

He was impatient to be gone now that they had sent the raven in response to Daenerys Targaryen, and that, too, was so familiar. He had always hated waiting, just like Arya. Once a course of action was decided on, he saw no reason to waste time in lingering when he could simply just do whatever it was that needed to be done. Sansa chided him for wanting to rush into danger, but she didn’t think it was that. He simply wanted to be useful, and now he saw this as the way in which he could be of use.

They still avoided the topic of his failures. They still avoided discussing their mother, and they never spoke of Sansa’s time in Kings Landing. In a way, Sansa was anxious for him to be off, as well. She didn’t want to talk about those things. She didn’t want to confront him with her pain the way she knew she had to. But it would mean saying goodbye to him again, and she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to do that.

In some ways, Sansa knew, she had been made harder by her experiences. She had grown tougher and colder out of necessity. Calloused to life every time it dealt her another sharp blow. She would face Robb’s leaving with a grim smile and the strength that she had learned, but it wasn’t easy, and when she was alone in her office, she allowed herself to feel it.

She just wanted them to be safe. She just wanted them to be home, together. Was this what her mother felt? When Sansa and Arya and Ned were riding off, was this the same hurt that seeped into Catelyn? Did she watch them packing and preparing and wonder why everyone couldn’t just stay?

She called Brienne into her office one morning, not many days before Robb was meant to leave, and she couldn’t help but look at the sword at Brienne’s hip. Brienne held on to its pommel often. Sansa had always assumed it to be a habit, some reflex, but maybe it was more than that. She could imagine that it must be a comfort, to hold tight to something that reminded her of someone she loved.

“My lady,” Brienne said in greeting, and she looked nervous. She was tense, and still standing. What did she think this was about, exactly?

“Please, Brienne,” Sansa said, gesturing to the chair.

Brienne sat, but she didn’t look any less concerned. She searched Sansa’s expression as if trying to find something. Sansa wished she knew what it was.

She hadn’t thought about how this would sound, but now that she was looking at Brienne’s face, she felt guilty. Brienne had been with her through a lot these past months. If it was entirely up to what Sansa wanted, she would have Brienne beside her through everything. But to keep Brienne here when Robb was going to be heading out there, alone, to face an enemy they know nothing about…it would be foolish. She couldn’t cage so fierce a fighter as Brienne for her own comfort when the threats she faced were no longer physical ones.

And, too, there was Littlefinger.

Littlefinger’s games were always dangerous, but they were especially dangerous to people like Brienne. People who were good and honorable and took too long to catch on to how deep Littlefinger's rot went. And Littlefinger had seen Brienne sparring in the yard. He knew that Brienne was strong, and fierce, and that she would give her life for Sansa if need be. Sansa had been uncomfortable with that knowledge, and she had been wary, but now it would be even worse. With Robb gone, Littlefinger would want to make some kind of move, and until Sansa knew what that move was…

“I want you to accompany Robb to Dragonstone,” she said. Brienne’s expression fell minutely in the several moments it took her to make herself go blank again.

“Are you releasing me?” she asked.

“No,” Sansa said. “Quite the opposite. I insist you come back.” She smiled, but Brienne still hesitated.

“I have been concerned about our last conversation,” she said. “And about what you might think of my attachment to Ser Jaime. I wanted to reiterate that…”

“That isn’t necessary, Brienne,” Sansa interrupted.

“I know he has chosen incorrectly. His sister blew up the sept with wildfire, and he chose to remain. Perhaps you were right about his honor.”

“Brienne, I don’t even remember what I said about his honor,” Sansa cautioned her. “Your history with Jaime Lannister has nothing to do with why I want to send you. You know that there are elements at work in this castle who would seek to drive us apart. Me, my brothers, you, anyone who is close to me. You understand that.”

It wasn’t a question, but Brienne answered, “yes, of course” anyway.

“I can’t risk you. You’re in danger here, though you may not think it.”

“And you’ll be in danger if I leave.”

“I’ll have Jon. He can protect me from physical threats. But I can’t protect you from the threats that go beyond that. You’ll be safer if you’re with Robb. And you’ll be going to meet three dragons. I’m almost envious.” She smiled again, and this time Brienne returned the gesture, though she still looked troubled. “Brienne, I promise. I think no less of you after hearing your story. I admire you. I don’t require you to hate all my enemies to the same degree I do. I only require you to protect me from them. And right now, it would protect me if you would go with Robb. Guard his back as you have guarded mine, and I will take care of the problems in my home. When you return, it will be safe for you again.”

Brienne hesitated, but still she nodded.

“Thank you, Lady Sansa,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’ll inform the king that I will be accompanying him.”

“Better you than me,” Sansa admitted. “He won’t be glad to know I want him looked after.”

Brienne agreed with an amused expression before she turned and left the room. She hesitated before she went, and Sansa expected another swearing of another oath. Another insistence that her love for Jaime Lannister wouldn’t outweigh her duties. Sansa was glad when she seemed to change her mind and continued out the door.

She wasn’t expecting that interaction to be so strangely off-balancing. Brienne’s nervousness and her desperation to prove that she was loyal…it made Sansa wish she had said something better, more empathetic. She couldn’t blame Brienne for caring for someone she shouldn’t. She had done it herself with Joffrey. Everyone around her had tried telling her that he was a monster, and even her own instincts had been recoiling, telling her that she was wrong, that he was saying cruel things because he was cruel, and not just because he was a prince with a sharp tongue, like in the tales. She had been too stupid then to listen to any reason, but Sansa didn’t think Brienne was too stupid for anything. Perhaps Jaime Lannister did, at heart, want to be a better man. It still made Sansa feel a bit better to know that Brienne didn’t think he should be excused when he continued to make the same bad choices.

If Joffrey had lived. If Sansa had been forced to marry him…what would she have thought of him? She had begun to think him a monster already before he cut off her father’s head, and it grew worse with the days that passed, when he finally showed her everything he was. If she was still there, still with him, would she be able to stand against him? Would she be able to stand against the queen?

She was only a young girl, and Jaime Lannister a man grown. Still, she knew it wasn’t always easy. Brienne must have had the right of it. Bad choices. Decisions made for love. She pitied both of them, she supposed. Falling in love with someone you shouldn’t must not be an easy way to live. Brienne shouldn’t love Jaime Lannister, and she must have known that he couldn’t love her while he was busy worshipping his sister. And Jaime…

Well. It went without saying that you shouldn’t feel anything but a normal sibling affection for your sister. Or your brother. No matter how kind they were. No matter how strong they were. No matter how lost you were when you found them and how they made you feel safe ever since.

It must not have been easy to live like that, was the point. Sansa wouldn’t know, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine.

Chapter Text

“You told me that Jon Snow had claimed the title of King in the North,” Dany said. She handed the missive back to Tyrion, taking in his shaken expression. Varys looked calmer, though he also looked vaguely intrigued. Dany was learning more about her advisors as the days passed here in their company, and she knew that there was little Varys liked so much as a good mystery.

“He was,” Tyrion said. “Robb Stark is dead. Or he’s meant to be, anyway. Another of my family’s gifts to the realm.”

“A gift returned, apparently,” Varys pointed out. “Because the boy isn’t dead.”

“Could it be Snow claiming his brother’s name?” Dany wondered. “You were surprised that the northerners chose him, given his birth. Maybe he wanted to make things simpler.”

“No, your grace,” Tyrion said. “Not even the Starks would try that. And they’re too honorable, besides. If Jon Snow meant to come, he would tell you. Stark must still be alive, somehow. Despite all the tales that the Freys took back to my father and nephew.”

“The Freys have always been a rather incompetent lot,” Varys suggested. “It’s possible they botched the assassination. I’m told it was a chaotic scene. With so much blood and death...and of course it was a Tully wedding, and I’m told Robb Stark has the Tully look. Perhaps there was a mix-up. A corpse mistaken for the king. They paraded him around, after, correct?”

“With his wolf’s head sewn to his neck, yes,” Tyrion answered. He glared at Varys. “Such a fun family, those Freys.”

“And the Boltons,” Varys pointed out blithely with the ease of a man who knows his family name isn’t on trial. “All dead now.”

“The north remembers,” Tyrion agreed wryly.

“Only your family remains,” Dany said. Tyrion inclined his head in agreement. “Do you think he means to take revenge?”

“Robb Stark is not so great a fool that he would think my death would do anything but cheer my sister.”

“And your brother?”

“Remove my sister, and my brother ceases to be a threat, I’ve told you,” Tyrion said. He was using the voice she hated: patient, almost condescending. She fixed him with a warning look.

“Your brother commands the Lannister armies,” she said. “If the Stark king means to demoralize him by attacking you, or even by insisting on your head as payment for bending the knee…”

“Robb Stark wouldn’t have to look nearly so far to off-balance my brother. Jaime’s only friend in the world is sworn to the Stark house.” Apparently seeing her surprise, he smirked. Another expression she hated, because he always felt like he had won something when he surprised her. “Did you ever hear the story of how my brother lost his hand?”

“No,” Dany had to admit. She’d heard of it, of course, from Varys. She had been glad to hear of it. The Kingslayer was still frightening to the little girl who lived inside her, but it helped to know that the great lion of Lannister had become little more than a declawed housecat, under his sister’s thrall. Dany would not have liked to lose her own hand, but she couldn’t say she thought the seven kingdoms were worse for that particular hand being lost.

“To hear her tell the tale, he lost his hand to protect a woman from rape. Not just any woman: the Maid of Tarth. A fearsome creature to look at, as tall and ugly as I am short and handsome, but noble and kind-hearted. A warrior maid who was once my brother’s jailer. And, for some reason, she and Jaime regard each other highly. She serves Sansa Stark now. There’s no one outside my family that my brother trusts more. If they wanted Jaime, they would only have to send the Maid of Tarth to fetch him, and he would let himself be led.”

“The Maid of Tarth,” Dany said. It sounded like a title from a story. “She, at least, shouldn’t hate you, if your brother made such a sacrifice for her. Perhaps her voice will hold some sway with this undead northern king.”

“Perhaps,” Tyrion agreed with a small grin.

“Robb Stark is a good man,” Varys said, making the word sound like mocking epithet. “All of the Stark men are. It’s in their blood to be noble. If he says he’ll come, he’ll come, and there won’t be any tricks.”

“There were tricks enough in the Whispering Wood,” Tyrion said.

“Battlefield tricks, yes. He was a good military commander, before he chose to marry a woman he loved and break the marriage alliance his mother secured with the Freys.” This, too, was mocking, and Dany had to agree. Who would make such a choice?

“And his wife?” Dany asked. Were there other houses aligned with the Starks through this marriage? That could be useful.

“She was from Volantis,” Varys said. He understood her aim in the question, but he continued anyway with details she would not have wanted. “And she was killed, your grace. I’ve heard no whispers to indicate otherwise. She was pregnant.”

Varys smiled sadly, and his words cut Daenerys in a place she hadn’t realized was still so sensitive. She couldn’t help the way her hand reflexively went to her belly, curving around the flatness there, remembering when it was round.

“His mother, too,” Tyrion continued, not noticing the look that passed between Dany and Varys. “Catelyn Stark. Certainly no friend of mine, but her death was a tragedy.”

“Your family has ruined his,” Dany said. “Your father empowered the Freys. Your family empowered the Boltons. You married his sister and then she was married to a man after you who was by all accounts a monster.” She looked to Varys for confirmation, and Varys nodded. “Why would a man like him ally with us?”

“Because he’s desperate,” Tyrion said. Was this another one of his guesses? Or was it what he actually thought? Dany had been finding it increasingly difficult to tell.

“Is he?” Dany asked. “Your sister has a large army, but she has no allies.”

“I’ve told you before. Underestimating my sister would be a grave error,” Tyrion remarked.

“You overrate her,” Dany said. Varys made a considering expression that may have been agreement or may be argument. It was difficult to tell.

“We need the north against her,” Tyrion said. “Our armies are made up of untrained, untested…”

“I have the Unsullied, and I have dragons.”

“My sister has wildfire, and I know that she will use it.”

Sometimes it was difficult to tell, with Tyrion, what was real. Half the time she was convinced that he just wanted to listen to himself speak, and others she was convinced that all his bluster was just guessing with enough confidence that she believed it to be certainty. He was her Hand, and she would not have chosen him for the position if she didn’t have faith in him, but it was hard to trust anyone when she was so close to her goal and there were yet so many ways that they could fail.

“Do you think your sister could withstand my force?” she asked plainly.

“No,” Tyrion said. “But the losses would be devastating if you went against her now.”

“Devastating to me? Or devastating to you?” Dany wondered. Varys looked away, barely suppressing his mirth. Dany found that she was annoyed with that, as well. Maybe she was just in a poor mood. The longer they lingered on Dragonstone, the more discontent she felt with the whole of this ungrateful kingdom.

“To you, your grace,” Tyrion said. “I have told you before, and I did not lie: I understand what it means that we are going against my siblings. I will plead for mercy for my brother if he is taken alive, and I will grieve for him if he is not. That doesn’t change the fact that I am loyal to you.”

Dany softened at the sight of his distress. Tyrion was older than her, and he had seen a lot. She sometimes forgot that he was also sensitive.

“Forgive me, my friend,” she said. “I do trust you.”

“The Starks,” Tyrion continued, grimacing already. “Are also loyal. You need people you can count on. Dorne makes a good ally because they want revenge and you offer it. Highgarden for the same reasons. The Starks…”

“The Starks want revenge as much as the others,” Varys insisted testily.

“Yes, but it will go beyond that, for them. If they swear to you, they swear for good.” He met the eyes of the other advisor, and Varys nodded, conceding the point.

“The Starks were also loyal to the Usurper Robert Baratheon,” Dany pointed out. Tyrion sighed.

“In fairness to Ned Stark, your father had just horribly murdered his father and brother,” Tyrion said. “For the crime of wanting Lyanna Stark returned to them after your brother kidnapped her.”

Dany frowned at that, but it was her turn to dip her head in acknowledgement. She should not allow herself to forget so easily the truth of what her family did to trigger the rebellion. Horrible things had been done to her family, but they had not happened for no reason. Rickard and Brandon Stark, she remembered. Killed for what? Her father’s pride?

“We will court the Starks,” Dany said. “And hope you are right.” She dismissed both of them, and then she was allowed to be alone with her table.

The map was beautiful, and she tried to imagine the places on it. The warm sands of Dorne. The beautiful flowers of Highgarden. The rocky heights of the Vale. The cold, snowy north. She remembered the snow falling on the throne in her vision in the House of the Undying. There had been a man, too, hadn’t there? A man on a throne with the head of a wolf.

For so long, it had been her purpose to rule. Her duty, perhaps, but her birthright. Her destiny. She had not thought of it as a job. A task that would not end. Her only thoughts were of taking back her home. How could she look ahead? She was so concerned with refusing to look back that she also refused to look far into the future, to when the battles would be done and the wars would be won. Now she had, and she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw.

Her father had ruled through fear. She had to accept that if she was going to be better. She had to stop getting defensive. Had to stop letting Viserys poison her memory. She didn’t want to rule that way. She wanted her people to love her. She wanted them to…

Worship you?

No. She banished that thought. She was uncomfortable with the idea, as anyone should be. Why should they worship her?

Because you have dragons.

Yes. She had dragons. And they were a responsibility as much as they were a marvel, as she well learned in Meereen. She could not be a good ruler if she didn’t have control of her children. She could not be a good queen if she didn’t put her peoples’ needs before her own. The realm had endured enough of terrible kings and terrible queens, and she knew that she had to be better. A kingdom was something that should be earned, not granted.

The greens of the forests were enticing. The snow of the north captivating. She wanted to see it all. Her kingdom. She wanted to be beloved in all of it.

Tyrion was right to remind her of her father’s cruelties to the Starks. These Westerosi were right to be wary. Just as she had learned not to trust people so blindly, they had learned not to trust a Targaryen ruler. Perhaps the Kingslayer had killed her father unjustly, but maybe Tyrion was right about that, as well. Maybe he had been right to stop Aerys before more destruction could be wrought. She could not mold herself after Targaryen rulers who had come before her, even if they were her birthright. She had to be better.

I went on a journey, she thought. I went to the far reaches of the world. I was a scared girl, and then a bride, and then a Khaleesi. I carried a child and I lost a child and I smothered my husband to free him. I am not of Westeros. I am of all of it. I have seen terrible places, and I have ended terrible reigns. Meereen…things went poorly in Meereen.

So I must learn, and not allow myself to forget. I must look back if I am to move forward.

Yes, she had to learn, and she had to be better than the ones she had learned from. Otherwise, she would not be any better than the lesser kings and queens and their insistences that they were the ones who deserved to rule. What good was breaking the wheel if you weren’t planning on replacing it with something better?

Chapter Text

For weeks, they had planned the excursion. His lieutenants had grumbled and muttered about it, but they never showed any open dissention, so Jaime pretended not to hear it. His sister seemed determined to rule men with an iron fist, much the way their father would have. Fear and intimidation and distrust. She would have had him manipulate his officers into turning on each other. She would have had him hang men who spoke against her, whether those men were heard by one or one hundred. Jaime would not lead his men like that. He feared to, honestly; he feared that they would be able to tell he was just as angry about it as they were. If he tried to carry out his sister’s laws, they would see his disgust. If he tried to explain his sister’s choices, they would hear his hesitation.

Cersei’s initial orders had been Highgarden, but her Hand had cautioned her that Highgarden may not be so easy to conquer, and Kings Landing needed food and supplies. They didn’t have the time to wait for a long siege to be over. Cersei had actually listened to Qyburn for once, and she had ordered that Jaime would bring an extra company of men with him when he left Kings Landing. They would go to Casterly Rock, first, where they would recruit more men. Then they would split, and the extra company would escort food and goods from Lannisport back to Kings Landing as fast as possible. Cersei had written up an order for the Lannister army to seize anything from the city that they wished.

Jaime had argued with her on that. Like all of his arguments, she had ignored it. She had sneered at him afterward, daring him to stand against her.

He backed down like he always did. What else was there to do? She had feared him once, when he came back from Riverrun, but she didn’t fear him anymore. She knew that he wouldn’t stop her. She knew that he wouldn’t depose her. She knew he wouldn’t even leave her, because he was a weak and honorless man who could not abandon the woman he’d loved for his entire life, even when he felt nothing but emptiness and terror when he was with her anymore.

So, yes. They would seize goods and food from the people of the Westerlands to fund more of Cersei’s endless wars.

From Lannisport, Jaime and the rest of his men would march down the Ocean Road, on to Highgarden. They would take the castle and The Reach for the crown, and they would kill Lady Olenna and all her men. They would finish what Cersei had started in regards to wiping out the Tyrell line. And why? Jaime wasn’t sure. Olenna was little threat on her own.

Pettiness, he knew. It’s because she dares to stand against Cersei.

She was an old woman, defenseless and grieving the family Cersei had killed.

Jaime dreamed sometimes of Brienne. She never spoke to him. She only stared at him. Her big eyes were disappointed. He knew exactly what she thought of him.

You should have killed me at Riverrun, he thought once when he woke. Gods, I wish you had.

If only he had given her enough reason.

Bronn left not long after they had ridden out from Kings Landing.

He was there one night, and then in the morning, his things were gone. His horse, too. One of the sentries said that they saw him riding off in the direction of Castle Stokeworth. Apparently, Bronn got tired of waiting for his reward, and he didn’t fancy going up against a woman who was rumored to be the ally of the dragon queen.

Jaime was, rather pathetically, a bit despondent when he realized that Bronn wasn’t coming back. It wasn’t like he thought the man was his friend in truth, but…he was the closest thing to it that Jaime had left, and he just went.

At his most paranoid moments, Jaime wondered if Bronn had received some better offer. If there was anyone Bronn truly liked, it was Tyrion. Or maybe Cersei had plied him away with gold. She never liked to share Jaime’s attention, and if she thought that Bronn could be a tool to him, she would pay him whatever she needed to remove him. Or perhaps it was just because she wanted him isolated. Alone.

It worked, whether that was her purpose or not. His men were deferent as always, though he felt their resentment more easily now that he didn’t have Bronn dogging his heels, always threatening to carry out whatever violence Jaime could not. He was used to hearing their dissent when they thought they were alone; Cersei might not have wanted to hear it, but her campaigns weren’t always popular. Most of the Lannister soldiers shared his disdain for the Freys they were forced to work with, and they had all been young boys once who dreamed of fighting as fiercely as the Blackfish. And now this: going against their former allies. Attacking Highgarden because Cersei had, in short time, destroyed the economy of Kings Landing and stripped the smallfolk of their food and now needed to find a way to replace it.

It wasn’t all Cersei. That wouldn’t be fair, and it wouldn’t be accurate, either. But years of war followed now by Cersei making all the worst choices out of a desire to protect herself had left the kingdom in a vulnerable state, and it was the people of Highgarden who must suffer from it. The Lannister army was not all made up of the second and third sons of minor nobles. Most of them were from Lannisport or the surrounding towns. Some of them were from Kings Landing. Some of them had probably hailed from Flea Bottom. Cersei sent them to harm the smallfolk, and she never considered who it was she was actually sending. How could she not see that? Jaime didn’t know. He had given up trying to make her understand. He had given up on so much.

When his soldiers called his sister their worst words, he melted out of the darkness to growl and snap at them like a good dog should, out of muscle memory or perhaps a want for it to mean something, that Cersei was in power and that they were the only ones left. He wanted for his choices to have been the right ones. He knew they weren’t, but there was no way to take them back, and so he could only move forward. The men always cowered and nodded and meekly apologized, but he knew they would use their worst words for him, next, and they would simply be more careful about where they spoke them.

Men were men, and it was easiest for them to attack Cersei with words that labeled her nothing worse than woman. Those were the charges that were easiest to answer to, but Jaime stopped himself one night when he heard a group of soldiers and camp followers around a fire talking about her policies and her lack of care for the smallfolk. He listened, instead, lurking in the shadow cast by a tent. Nothing they said crossed the line into disrespect. They also weren’t wrong. Jaime found that that was worse than the empty words that had no power. They were right. Cersei didn’t want to hear it. Cersei never wanted to hear anything from anybody. She used to be cautious, and she used to listen, but now she had found herself in power, and it was the only thing she had left. She had convinced herself of her own superiority, and nobody’s words could reach her. But she was driving her people to madness and starvation, and she could not rule in fear forever.

Eventually, someone was going to stop her.

It wouldn’t be easy with the Mountain at her side, but she had plenty of servants and handmaidens, and Jaime knew better than anyone how easy it was to blend into the background when you were always there. No doubt Aerys would never have thought of Jaime as a threat, and Cersei would dismiss her handmaidens as nothing right up until one of them cut her throat in her sleep to save the realm from her chaos.

She wasn’t safe. With her on the throne, none of them were safe.

It should be him, but he knew it wouldn’t be.

He had control of her army. The majority of them seemed to be against the things she’d ordered, and yet they marched where Jaime told them to march, and there had been far fewer desertions than he had expected. Perhaps Jaime wasn’t the only one who felt trapped; the realm was burning and starving and freezing all at once, and being in the army at least guaranteed a meal and a place to rest your head. If he turned them now, marched them instead toward Riverrun to take it back from the Freys, it was possible that most of them would go gladly. If he wanted the crown from his sister, they would give it to him. If he made common cause with the Starks, they would agree.

Not all of them, no. But even the ones who didn’t feel entirely right about it would follow. It would still be better than this.

Jaime didn’t turn his army. He marched on. Drove them closer to Casterly Rock with the end goal of turning south towards Highgarden. It was a slow march, marred often by bandit groups and small pockets of fighting men who may have belonged to Highgarden’s army at some point. Perhaps the army was dragging its feet, but Jaime wasn’t any more eager than they to reach their destination, so perhaps that wasn’t a surprise.

“The dragon queen,” one man said, sitting by the fire. Jaime was meant to be sleeping in his tent nearby, but he couldn’t, and he stared at the shadows on the roof instead, watching the way the firelight made them move. He had always hated the way fire never let anything sit still. “She’s got three dragons, they say. None of us are a match for three dragons. Even if he still had both his hands…”

The soldier trailed off to hisses and quiet reminders of which pavilion was Jaime’s, as if it wasn’t obvious enough from its size. It was funny, maybe, but Jaime didn’t feel much like smiling. What had happened to him?

“The dragon queen will burn the city to the fucking ground,” another Lannister soldier said, quieter but not nearly quiet enough. “We should be glad we’re out of there.”

“She’s probably got time to burn us on her way,” another man said, and they all laughed. Jaime recognized the high, hysterical edge to it. Men often laughed like that when they felt it was hopeless. He swallowed back bile.

“What about the wildfire?” someone asked. Jaime felt his stomach churn violently “Does the dragon queen know about the wildfire? She can’t let the whole city burn if she wants to rule it.”

“She can rule from anywhere. She’s already got Dragonstone, and that’s as good a castle as any. She has dragons. She can burn the Red Keep to the ground, with the Lannister cunt inside. She can burn the whole city. It won’t matter. She flies away, builds a castle of the bones somewhere.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m not. I saw it in a dream. Whole castle made of burnt bones.”

“You’re drunker than I thought, if you think a dream means anything.”

“We’re all going to die. I saw that in my dream, too.”

“Shut the fuck up,” one man said, and there were the sounds of scuffle. Before Jaime could drag himself out of bed to end it, it quieted itself, and their voices dropped to low murmurs that became comforting, like the sound of water. A creek, maybe. Like the one he and Brienne had fought beside.

You killed my father, the dragon queen would say when he was dragged before her, having been taken in battle. Would she order him beheaded? Or would she let her dragons burn him alive? Or eat him, perhaps. What did dragons even eat? He imagined they were too big to get much satisfaction from eating a single man, but he did have a whole army at his back. Maybe she’d feed them to the dragons, too. Maybe all their Lannister-loyal bones would be enough to sate the beasts.

When he was asleep, it was Aerys. It always came back to Aerys. He was on his throne. He was mad. He was screaming. Burn them all. Burn them all.

Yes, I killed your father, Jaime thought, but he could not move towards the throne. The creeping green of wildfire was spilling down the steps. A million waterfalls plummeting off the dais and spreading towards him. Slowly, slowly. His sword caught the light. It was Oathkeeper.

Burn them all, Aerys said.

Brienne’s fingers curled softly through his hair. He had been weeping.

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here.”

His scars throbbed, and he wrapped the arm around her, and he felt the skin beneath her shirt as his stump pulled the fabric up. They were in a bed. A canopy bed, somewhere cold. Pressed together for warmth, and he never wanted to leave. He held her tighter to keep her there. She pressed her lips to his forehead.

“You killed him,” she said. “You are a man of honor, Ser Jaime.”

“Jaime,” he begged her. “Please. Just Jaime.”

“Jaime,” she said.

She kissed him. The shock of it, bone-jarring like a hit with a blunted tourney sword, sent him skittering out of the dream and back into his tent, where he was half-hard already and fumbling for his breeches with his stump, cursing and switching to his left hand, before suddenly remembering himself, and dropping his hand away.

He sat up. He breathed deeply. The tent was empty. The firelight still played on the ceiling, turning red into gold and into the black of shadow. He could still feel Brienne’s lips on his, and he wondered if that was what they would taste like. He wondered if they would be so soft.

He lay back down, and he took himself in hand. He shouldn’t. He should have been ashamed to think of her. She was a maiden. A woman of a highborn house. She was the closest thing he had to a friend. He respected her.

He wanted her. He palmed his cock with his left hand. He had gotten better at this since he lost his hand, but it still never quite felt right, and it usually took a little time for him to get into the rhythm of it. It seemed like it might be easier tonight, and he didn’t want to think about what that might mean. He remembered every aching second of what she had looked like when she rose out of the bath in front of him. He remembered how gentle she had been when he lost his hand, even though she hated him still. He remembered the way she had looked at him when he had to leave her behind in Harrenhal. The way she said goodbye, Ser Jaime.

He was spilling not long after that, and he caught his breath, resting his maimed forearm over his eyes. He should have been ashamed. He shouldn’t have been smiling. He shouldn’t have stroked himself through it, thinking still of Brienne and what it might feel like to have her for real.

His ardor cooled quickly, as he remembered.

Enemies now. Enemies for as long as he still stood with his sister against the family Brienne had sworn herself to.

Then he was ashamed.

His ardor had cooled, but his dream hadn’t quite faded enough. He drifted there, near sleep. He wondered how she fared in Winterfell. Was it too cold? Were her nights too lonely? Was she happy, serving such an honorable family? Was she well? Was she safe? Did she sleep better than he did? He imagined she must. Nestled safely beneath her furs, with a fire roaring in the fireplace. It was a nice place to imagine her.

He hoped she would never hear of what he was leading his men to do.

In the morning, before they marched again, he penned another letter to Sansa Stark. He hardly knew what he was thinking with this continued correspondence. Cersei would kill him if she found out, or she would warp it in some way, use it to take revenge or use it to gain an advantage. Jaime had kept it hidden so far, and hopefully it would stay that way.

Sansa’s letters were sharp and witty, and he knew she plainly did not trust him. She wrote often of Brienne with a mocking edge. Perhaps that was why he kept writing her. It was the only scrap of news of Brienne he ever got, and he didn’t mind being mocked for things he deserved to be mocked for. At least she never mentioned his penmanship. She could be polite about some things.

Brienne had still refused to write to him. He tried not to let it bother him, but he had to periodically remind himself how little he deserved for her to write to him in order to convince his wretched brain to shut up.

Lady Sansa, he wrote. She never graced her letters to him with a salutation. The first time she wrote, she called him Kingslayer, but she had not used any title since. He liked to think that it was a sign of her deepening regard: too polite to call him Kingslayer any longer, but not quite fond of him enough to allow Ser Jaime. I trust you and Lady Brienne are well. Your last letter did not mention her at all.

Was that too pathetic? He imagined that Sansa would likely think it so. He left it in. He liked to believe that she thought his transparent, pathetic yearning for word of Brienne was funny and not just…well, pathetic. Especially since he had some actual advice he would like to offer her, and he wanted there to be a chance that she would actually listen to it.

You wrote to me once that you and your half-brother are more prepared to face threats than your parents were, he started. Yet it seems to me that your parents made some mistakes I already hear you are making. The company they kept, for example.

Was that too vague? He didn’t want to warn Sansa away from the fucking Blackfish, after all. He wished he could just state “don’t trust Littlefinger, you little idiot” plainly, but he didn’t think that would go over well, and there was a tone to maintain, here.

Some friends are better kept at a distance. I will assume, for my own peace of mind, that you have yours wrapped around your little finger.

Now that was surely too obvious, but he was hardly going to start over again. The letters were hard enough to form with his left hand the first time.

For the sake of Lady Brienne (and for the sake of a weary old knight’s hopes for future entertaining letters) I hope you heed my advice.

Not that he had actually given her any, but the message should have been clear. If Sansa was half as clever as her mother had been, she would know that he was asking her to kill the traitorous little snake. Being a Stark and all, he assumed that she wouldn’t, but maybe she would at least be wary enough to keep an eye on him.

Cersei had been glad to hear that Littlefinger was with the Starks, of course. She had been convinced that he would turn against them and take the North for himself.

Jaime still wasn’t sure exactly what Littlefinger could want with the north, but he had a feeling it wasn’t anything that Sansa would want him to have, and when Sansa suffered, Brienne suffered, and Jaime…

Well. Jaime had added enough to that suffering. He wanted to do what he could to prevent it, if he couldn’t be there for her in any other way.

Chapter Text

Saying goodbye to Robb again in the courtyard felt like it must be some cruel trick of the gods.

So much had changed since the first time they said their goodbyes, but it felt like they were those same children again, in a way that made dread well up within him. Jon could tell that Sansa felt the same. Her back was straight and her face blank, but he could tell her nervousness in the way she kept pulling her cloak tighter around herself, as if to shield against the cold, though it was warmer than usual today.

Brienne stood with Robb, which was another difference that stood starkly. Jon had been surprised when Brienne informed him that she would be traveling with Robb to Dragonstone. They had been sparring in the yard, as they often did of late, and she had mentioned it so casually that he knew she had assumed that he had already been told.

But of course he hadn’t been told. Sansa kept things close, now. Sometimes she kept things too close.

Davos had mentioned it again recently, the fact that Sansa kept he and Robb guessing about so many things. Jon had stopped him and said the same thing he always did: he trusted Sansa. She understood Littlefinger better than any of them did, and Jon knew that if she truly needed help, she would ask them for it. But it was difficult not to worry when he saw her receiving ravens and quickly tucking the scrolls they delivered away, as if she didn’t want anyone to see the seal. It was difficult to trust when he was constantly being pushed off and gently told “don’t worry”. He knew that she hated when he tried to protect her, but he wondered if she knew how he hated it when she refused to let him in.

Standing in the courtyard, hugging Robb desperately, she seemed as trustworthy as she ever had, and Jon was sorry for doubting her. He felt again that particular ache that came when he thought of her and the fact that no matter what he did, he couldn’t completely keep her safe. It was too late for him to even start. So many horrible things had already happened, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t make those horrible things go away.

He wanted to. It was something that pulsed within him, grew stronger the more he thought about it. She was right when she said that no one could protect anyone. The things he had seen at Hardhome, especially, were impossible to protect against. But still he wished to be given the opportunity to try. If only she would let him.

Robb was whispering to her, and she was nodding, and she looked in Jon’s direction with a sheepish smile, and she reached out and tugged him in so that the three of them could hug again, just as they had when Robb first returned.

“We’ll miss you,” Sansa was saying. “Promise us you’ll return this time.”

“You know I can’t promise that,” Robb said with an indulgent smile. He drew her in and pressed his lips to her forehead. Brotherly. A normal gesture, with normal feelings attached to it. Jon forced his own memories away. Robb was saying, “but I will do my best. Hopefully, Tyrion is better than his siblings.”

“His sister, at least,” Sansa qualified, though Brienne didn’t seem to be paying attention. She was talking to Podrick, who hadn’t stopped looking giddy since he found out that they were riding off to another adventure.

“I’ll be safe,” Robb said. Sansa nodded, and Robb pulled her into another hug. She let him, slumping miserably against him. Taking a moment to show her true exhaustion and sadness to see him go. Robb looked between them. “Keep each other safe,” he said. “Trust each other.”

“We will,” Sansa said. “Trust Brienne.”

“I will.” Sansa moved off to say her goodbyes to her sworn sword, and Robb stepped closer to Jon. “She wouldn’t want me to say it, but…”

“I’ll look out for her. I’ll keep an eye on Littlefinger.”

“Good. I expect to hear some news of you duelling with the man when he tries to wed her.”

Robb smiled like it was a joke and clapped Jon on the back, and Jon forced a smile. He had dreamed of something similar, the other night. Some fool dream about fighting Littlefinger when he asked for Sansa's hand. He hadn’t been able to shake it. He wished he could. He hated feeling like…

“I won’t let him touch her,” he said, and Robb nodded. “Remember.”

“The threat beyond the Wall,” Robb agreed. “I remember. Nothing is more important than that.”

“It’s the lives of everyone,” Jon said. Robb nodded. He was so sincere like this. So kingly.

“I know. I’ll do my best to convince her. In my rather limited experience, kings and queens don’t like to be told that there’s a threat they should be focused on when they think their chosen battle is the most important.”

“Aye,” Jon admitted with a grin. “I know it too.”

Robb must have seen that Jon still worried, because he put out his hand again and squeezed Jon’s shoulder through his cloak.

“She will know of the importance of it,” he said. “And if she refuses to accept it, we’ll devise some way to prove it to her. The Wall still stands, and we’ve had no ravens from the Watch of any sightings of the army of the dead. There is still time.”

“Not much,” Jon said. “I can feel it.”

“I will speak with her,” Robb promised, and Jon believed him.

Sansa was hugging Brienne. Brienne seemed unsure how to touch her, and she was holding onto Sansa with the delicacy she would use for a particularly sickly child. Robb laughed at them both, and it sounded so much like it would have sounded when he was young.

“Lady Brienne, my sister isn’t some newborn kitten,” he said, striding over to them. Brienne flushed, but she was smiling too, and Jon watched them. It was just like when he was young; he was the only one not smiling.

There was so much to worry about. The northern lords had not demanded his head when the name of his father had been revealed. They had not demanded that he be sent back to the Wall. They had looked at him with wariness and discomfort, but in the end Lyanna Mormont declared him still Stark enough for her, and that pronouncement had been cheered for thoroughly by the rest.

Still. He could feel them watching him. Wondering if he was just another Rhaegar. Would they ever trust him again? Could they trust him? Targaryen madness. He wondered if they were all thinking it, or if he was the only one who worried.

Jon and Sansa stood side by side as they watched Robb and Brienne and Davos and the rest ride off toward Dragonstone. It would be weeks before they would see Robb again, and Jon felt the length of those weeks stretching out in front of them. It was starting to snow. There was so much for them to prepare for. Still, Jon didn’t want to move. He wanted to watch until the others disappeared.

“Why did you send Brienne with Robb?” he asked finally. He had wondered. It hadn’t seemed right to ask, with Brienne always nearby. He hadn’t wanted to make anyone think that he disagreed with Sansa’s choice, though of course he did.

“Not here,” Sansa said smoothly, and then she ducked her head and walked, expecting him to follow.

Back in Sansa’s solar, she shook out the snow from her hair and handed her heavy cloak off to a handmaiden, dismissing her kindly. She closed the door behind her, and she locked it, too.

“Littlefinger,” she said quietly, forcing Jon to lean closer to hear. “Is not the sort of man Brienne can protect me from. He is the sort of man that I want to protect Brienne from.”

“Same as me,” Jon pointed out. Sansa sighed.

“Yes, Jon,” she said. “Same as you. I’ve told you before that I don’t mean it as an insult. You and Brienne are very clever in your own ways, but Littlefinger is…he is always doing the worst thing, and you and Brienne often don’t even think of the worst thing.”

“That’s not true,” Jon said. He tried for light and airy, but instead he sounded sullen and defensive, as ever. “I’ve seen plenty. I’ve done plenty. I’ve made difficult choices.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Sansa’s hand was on his arm, suddenly. Warm. Much warmer than Robb’s had been when they stood out in the snow. Different. Jon fought the urge to snatch his arm away. “But we need to play a careful game with Littlefinger now. He still controls too many of the pieces on the board. Until we know that my uncle has been successful beyond a doubt…”

“Right,” Jon said.

“I wish it was as simple as throwing him down and taking his head, Jon, truly.”

She was looking at him with something pleading in her expression. He wanted to believe her. He did believe her. He wanted to believe her without reservation. But it would be so easy for Sansa to deceive him. She wouldn’t even have to try very hard. She would just have to ask him for something in a very sweet voice, and he would give it to her. Or she would have to look at him sadly, in that exact way she was looking at him now. She had to know at this point that he would give her anything he could.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked wearily. Sansa sighed and sat at her desk, pulling a letter out of her pocket and setting it aside for later. The seal was that of the Lannister house. He looked at her, but she seemed not to notice his gaze. She was looking out the window, still considering.

“I want Littlefinger to believe that I’m ready to hear him out,” she said. “I want him to come to me and tell me his plans. It’s the only way we can know for sure what he aims to do, and he won’t tell me plainly until he thinks he has a chance at convincing me.”

“You think he would tell you the truth at all?”

“I think he would tell me the parts that I would need to help him with. There is never just any one truth with Littlefinger.”

Jon nodded. She sounded so tired. He suddenly felt sorry for doubting her. This dance seemed to go back and forth a lot. Jon wondering, then feeling sorry for wondering. Jon trusting, then hoping that that trust wasn’t misplaced. There were days when the thought of Sansa betraying him or anyone else in the family was absurd. There were days when he thought she was otherwise far too good to be true.

“How should we do that?” he asked. He sat down at the other chair at Sansa’s desk, spreading his hands when she looked at him questioningly. “I’m here to help, Sansa. How should we do it?”

She must have seen his good intentions in his expression, because some of the tension left her shoulders. Jon had to remind himself that he wasn’t the only one who had defaulted to distrust after enough betrayals.

“Distance,” she told him. “We have to pretend at distance. Not speak as often as we’re accustomed. At public dinners, we act strained. We should meet up periodically. Here, perhaps, or in your own quarters, but only when we’re sure it’s safe. I need him to think that I feel alienated by you and Robb. I need him to think that the two of you don’t trust me enough to let me rule, and that I’m resentful of that.”

“Are you?” Jon had to wonder.

“No,” Sansa answered, with a curious smile. “But it’s an easy thing for Littlefinger to believe. He resents everyone who has something he wants and does not have.”

Jon nodded; that was easy to believe. Littlefinger always had an expression on his face like he hungered. No matter how much he had, no matter how much he had been given, he would always want more.

“Robb told us to trust each other,” he said.

“I wouldn’t need Robb to tell me to trust you,” Sansa promised. “Did you?”

“No,” Jon said. He wished it was less true.

“Good,” Sansa replied. She looked again at the window, sighing, and she pulled open the Lannister letter she had been keeping in her pocket. “We have so many enemies now, you and I. And fewer friends beside us than we had this morning. But we can survive it if we work together.”

She looked at him at last, and he could see that she was worried. It was only visible for a moment. She did such a good job at keeping everything hidden, otherwise. He nodded, and he smiled so that she would see that he agreed.

“Whatever you need,” he reminded her, and he stood up. She nodded, and she turned back to her letter. It was written in a poor hand, and he could not make out any of the words, but it was long. He thought of asking who it was from. Would she tell him? He went for the door instead.

I trust you, he wanted to say. I trust you. Over and over again until he was sure he believed it. He wanted nothing in life quite so badly as he wanted to trust in Sansa.

Chapter Text

Brienne worried for Sansa the moment they left Winterfell, but it wasn’t until a few days into their ride toward White Harbor that the worry grew uncomfortably sharp within her.

It happened the last time she left her lady too, of course. Her goal to rescue and protect Lady Sansa had been a part of her for so long that to abandon her, undefended, even for good reason, had left Brienne feeling unsettled and adrift. She had been tasked then with securing the Tully army to help Sansa and Jon fight against the Boltons, and it had been a worthy goal. She had known it would be a quick enough trip, too, if things went well.

Of course it hadn’t gone well, technically, and her last glimpse of Jaime still haunted her when she allowed herself to think of it, but it had been quick.

This trip promised to be longer.

Brienne trusted King Robb’s judgement, and of course it made sense that they had to respond in some way to the dragon queen’s summons. They had fearsome enough enemies in the Lannister army and the supposed army of the dead. They did not need to make another by being too hasty to refuse a possible alliance with this new queen.

Still. A Targaryen queen bent on conquering Westeros with three dragons in her possession was not an ordinary alliance to make. And there was the tone of the letter. King Robb had read it aloud the first night on the road, reminding them all what they were facing. Tyrion Lannister’s words had been pretty enough, but their prettiness didn’t do much to conceal the threats hidden within them. Words like the rightful queen and we would like to give you a chance. The letter had been addressed to Lady Sansa, and it was flippant about their former forced marriage in a way that made Brienne want to curl her fingers into a fist. It seemed that there were men at every turn looking to claim Sansa’s hand, and none of them were worthy of her.

Not that Tyrion’s letter indicated that he wanted her back, but from what little Brienne knew of Tyrion, he wouldn’t state anything like that so baldly. He would cloak everything in jests and half-truths. It was possible he didn’t even understand the threat that the mention of the marriage would necessarily make. Or perhaps he did, and it was a threat meant to convey one of the Stark brothers to Dragonstone as quickly as possible to answer it—just like Brandon Stark had abandoned caution for love of Lyanna.

Or. Well. One Stark brother and one cousin.

Brienne still had trouble remembering that Jon Snow was who he was. Lady Sansa had adapted quickly; as soon as the information was made public to the northern lords, she had begun to name him cousin instead of brother. Brienne was always tripping over it, always hesitating a moment too long. King Robb did the same. But Lady Sansa had always been careful with the politics of everything, and she likely wanted to ensure that the northern lords knew that Jon’s parentage meant nothing to her. He was still Jon.

He had been amused the day after the announcement when Brienne didn’t know what to call him, but their sparring had quickly returned equilibrium. Jon was still Jon. He had never had the Stark name before, and he would not take the Targaryen name now. Still a bastard. Still him. She had been used to him as king, and it did not take very long for her to get used to him as a descendent of Rhaegar and Lyanna. She would miss their sparring sessions when she was away, and she knew that Podrick would, too. Jon was a fierce fighter. Sparring with him reminded her often of the fight she’d had with Jaime on the bridge. Jaime had been chained and weak from a year of captivity, but he was still the most graceful fighter Brienne had ever seen. It would have been an honor to watch the two of them fight at their best, though Jon had been little more than a boy the one time he met Jaime.

He had spoken of that single meeting with some amusement, and he had grilled her for information on the way Jaime fought the one time she faced him. It made Brienne sad for Jaime’s loss all over again. She had been unkind to him when he lost his hand, angered by his eagerness to die because of it, but the more time passed, the more she realized why he had despaired. It could not have been easy to continue living when the thing he lived for had been taken from him. I was that sword hand, he’d said once, and the more she heard of the legend of Jaime’s fighting prowess, the more she longed for it to be returned to him.

Perhaps it would give him the strength to make better choices. No. She couldn’t think like that. Jaime had chosen his path. She should not waste her time in wishing he would pick a more worthy one.

After a week of sparring only with Podrick, she proposed the idea of sparring to the king. It took a certain amount of courage to suggest it, because she still didn’t know Robb enough to know how he would react. She was relieved when he agreed so readily, and with such a brilliant smile.

She still didn’t know what Robb thought of her, or of her Lannister connections. She often saw him looking at her sword. She supposed that honor should compel her to offer it back to him, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. It was the sword that Jaime had given her. It would always be hers, he had said. She couldn’t let go of it. If the king wanted it, he would have to ask her for it.

He didn’t.

He wasn’t the same fighter his cousin was. He was stronger than she expected, given how self-deprecating he was about the idea when she first proposed it, suggesting he would be a better match for her squire. He still had the right instincts. He was better at blocking and defending than attacking. He was breathing heavily by the end of a very short time, and he would not be able to overpower her without some serious work.

“It’s the best I’ve fought since,” he said, after. It was a proud look that he gave her. Proud and pleased with himself and a little bit amused at his own incompetence. “Perhaps Sansa saw my last weak attempt against Jon at Winterfell and that was why she sent you.”

“I know why she sent me,” Brienne said. She sheathed her sword and was glad to have its familiar weight back on her hip.

“She told you, then? About Litttlefinger?”

“Lord Baelish, yes,” Brienne said. Robb snorted.

“I don’t think we need to afford him the courtesy of a full title, do you?” he asked. “Sansa hasn’t told me the whole of it, I’m sure. Has she told you?”

“I know enough.”

“Yes. I’m sure you do.” He smiled at her, and Brienne had another of those odd moments when she felt Lady Catelyn’s love for Robb. His mischievous smile. The way his curls bounced about his head like a halo. Catelyn Stark had loved her children with such a fierceness, and Brienne had admired her lady so much that it was easy to feel. I will keep them safe, she promised the ghost of her dead lady, just as she always did when she felt it. Robb sat down on the log by the fire and gestured her over. Podrick was off gathering water, and the other men were a safe distance away, pretending that they had not been watching the fight. Brienne sat on the other side of the log. Robb looked into the fire. “My sister means to win at Littlefinger’s own game. Do you know how?”

“No, your grace.”

“Please don’t call me that,” Robb laughed. “Not you. I know you hate me.”

Shocked, Brienne turned to look at him, and his confidence faltered when he saw her face.

“I don’t hate you,” she said, dumbly, forgetting in her surprise to say your grace like she meant to. “I…”

I stood against Ser Jaime to protect you. Do you not know how difficult that was for me?

“Perhaps hate was the wrong word.”

“It was.”

“Disdain my presence?”

“You’re delusional.”

They both froze, then, but only for a moment before Robb burst into laughter. Brienne felt her face flush. She hadn’t meant to say that. She had gotten too used to speaking freely with Podrick. She tried to stammer out an apology, but Robb waved her off. He was still chuckling when he next spoke.

“Please, don’t apologize,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you to snap at me. I don’t know what sort of king you think I am, but I don’t want to be the sort of king that my sister’s sworn sword is afraid to speak to. I would like us to be friends. I know that you likely think…”

“I said already that I don’t hate you.”

“No, but a woman of your honor surely has to wonder at mine.”

Brienne frowned at him. She had heard him say such things before, and she knew that she could not really argue with them. Robb had made some choices that she would not have made, surely. Choices that she had not made when the time came. But it was so easy to understand him. Love…Brienne still had yet to fully understand the romantic love of songs and stories. But if Jaime stood before her and offered to pledge his love to her… It would be much harder to turn her back on that than it would be to allow herself that happiness, no matter how dishonorable it would be.

“I don’t wonder at your honor,” she said. “I know you are a good man, and I think you will make a good king. I am sorry for your loss, and I am sorry that you must carry the guilt of it as well, I suppose. I understand your choice.”

“Do you?” Robb’s expression was just teasing enough that Brienne found she wasn’t so much embarrassed as she was annoyed.

“Yes,” she said. “If I had been in your position…”

“You were in my position,” Robb said, echoing her thoughts of only a few moments ago. She smiled slightly. Wryly.

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t. I chose to honor my oaths rather than give them up for a sentiment that wasn’t returned. That isn’t the same at all.”

Robb made a thoughtful sound and looked once more into the fire.

“I suppose,” he said. “If I was you, I would still hate me.”

“I think you already do that enough for the both of us, don’t you?” Brienne asked. He smiled again, and his eyes when they met hers glittered with a sharp kind of mirth that made him look for a moment like his mother.

“Well said,” he admitted.

Silence descended over them, but it seemed to Brienne to be a more comfortable one than before. They knew each other’s minds better than they had. Brienne considered telling him that she admired him, in truth, in some shameful, deep part of her heart, for choosing what he had. It was obviously the wrong choice, but that was easy to say in hindsight. It must have felt glorious to choose love in the moment.

It probably wouldn’t be well received, considering. She didn’t say anything.

“Can Sansa handle Littlefinger?” she asked. Robb sighed.

“I think she can,” he said. “Though I hardly know if that’s a logical answer or just...faith in her. She’s so different from how she was as a girl. I may just be taking her competence now for granted. Littlefinger is a worthy foe, she tells me. He seems like a fawning snake as bad as any of them, but Sansa would know better than me. We have to trust her.”

“I do,” Brienne said. Robb smiled.

“So do I,” he replied.

Some of the soldiers that night goaded Podrick into singing a song for them, and he did. It was sad and mournful, and it rang inside Brienne’s head long after everyone else was secured inside their bedrolls and she was left to take first watch with another soldier. Robb and Podrick both slept soundly enough, and she rested easier with them both within her view. Duties like this were simple. Securing the survival of her charges. Her body was meant for it. She was strong and she was determined and she didn’t fear injury or death. There was so much to fear, but not that. Not really.

Maiming, maybe. She still marveled at how Jaime had survived what he had. She thought of it often, even as she prodded him to live and keep fighting. She tried to imagine surviving the same. What was she if not her strength? What was she if not her body? She was too ungainly for anything else. Losing her sword hand…that would be the end of her usefulness, and what good would she be then? No man wanted an ugly wife with both hands. She would be worse than a burden on her father. If being a knight as a woman was impossible, being a maester was even more so. A healer? She had no head for that sort of thing. What would a one-handed woman even do?

But Jaime had survived. On her urging, he had survived and fought and made it home, and still he served his family and his sister. Useful to them. A tool to carry out the worst of their impulses, perhaps. Brienne wasn’t sure. She never really understood how much Jaime was involved in their maneuvering. He claimed he didn’t have a head for it, the politics and the scheming, but she couldn’t let herself believe him innocent of all of it.

Knowing that the next time they met would likely be on a battlefield, it was far easier to remind herself of the worst of it and not the soft parts that lingered even though she tried to scrub them away.

He is his sister’s creature. Even now he does her bidding. He will love her always. He has told you so before. He will never love you, and he will never turn his back on her, no matter how many atrocities she commits.

She had used wildfire. She had killed hundreds with the very thing that had caused Jaime to sacrifice his reputation to kill Aerys, and still Jaime had stayed with her.

Brienne would not pretend to mourn the High Sparrow and his gang of acolytes. From the reports that Lady Sansa received and read aloud, their religious zealotry sounded terrifying, and the fact that it had been allowed to gain such a foothold in a city as sinful as Kings Landing was a tragedy in itself. Many relative innocents probably met with terrible punishment, and it would have gotten worse if Cersei hadn’t put a stop to it.

But putting a stop to it should mean laws and armies and peaceful negotiation, or a quick, decisive battle. It did not mean packing the sept with all of her enemies and setting them alight. Pretty Margaery Tyrell, who had always been so kind to Brienne. Her brother Loras, who had loved Renly. Even Jaime’s uncle Kevan, who was the only Lannister aside from Jaime who had ever gone out of his way to be kind to Brienne when she was in Kings Landing. Even Tyrion, Jaime’s beloved brother, had mostly confused her with japes about their height difference and had wondered aloud when she failed to respond if she was simple-minded.

Those people Cersei killed, most of them had not been dangerous to anyone but the queen. The Sparrows had been dangerous, but Cersei had acted to secure her own interests. There was nothing that could make that honorable.

Innocents, Jaime, she would argue if she was there with him. If it were anyone else...

Jaime had killed the king for less. Aerys had wanted to burn the city and wanted Tywin’s head. Millions of innocents, and Jaime had saved them at the expense of his own honor. How could that boy have justified protecting a monster who had actually carried out a similar plot? On a smaller scale, yes, but it was still horrific. Was love more important than honor? Was Cersei more important? Or perhaps everyone was right. Perhaps it wasn’t that Brienne was the only person to see Ser Jaime clearly. Perhaps she was the only maiden fool enough to fall for it. He had seemed so raw and honest in the bath at Harrenhall, and she had believed him, but…perhaps it had been the threat to his father, after all, that had forced his hand.

No, she thought, recoiling. No. Everyone else is wrong. Ser Jaime did an honorable thing. He made an honorable choice!

Or he wanted you to believe that.

Angrily, she paced around the camp, checking on everyone, peering into the darkness. When she sat again by the fire, the cold had done away with the murkiness of her thoughts.

No, she insisted. Calmer. I know him. I know he made the choice to save the innocents. I know he did not lie to me. When she tried to give him back his sword at Riverrun, she had seen the hurt in his expression. He cared for her. He would not lie to her. If it had just been a lark, in the baths, he'd had plenty of time to correct her impression. He never tired of disdaining her view of him as an honorable man; it would have been easy enough to shatter her illusions, if he truly wanted to.

He had been strong once. He wasn’t strong enough anymore. That was the whole of it. His love for Cersei was more important to him than anything, and that was the way it had always been. That didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of honor. It meant only that he wasn’t capable of honor when it came to her.

When she dreamt of him that night, it was a fragmented one that she couldn’t remember come morning. His arms were around her. He was speaking into her ear, but she couldn’t make out the sounds. He was comforting her, perhaps. Or she was begging him to stay. She did not know, only held him tighter, pulled him against her until it almost hurt.

Don’t go, she thought, fighting against her instinct to wake when the sunlight began to hit her eyelids. Please, Jaime, don’t leave me.

Chapter Text

Sansa knew that it was dangerous to underestimate Littlefinger, but she did feel some satisfaction at how predictable he was: it only took two days after she and Jon began their playacting at resentment for him to find her alone on the walk above the training yard.

He had this way of appearing out of the shadows that she once thought was mysterious but which she now found tedious, because he was so likely to interrupt her when she wanted to be alone. Today, she was glad for it, because it was what she had been hoping for when she came up here.

Still, without Brienne near, it was lonely. Knowing there was no one who could stop him except Sansa herself.

She and Jon hadn’t spoken at all in public for those two days, and they had spoken only rarely in private, not wanting to give the game away accidentally. It was impossible to know who to trust, and anyone who saw them sneak away together might be one of Littlefinger’s spies. Jon put on a convincing air of wounded uncertainty, matched only by her seething anger. Jon skulked and avoided her gaze. She gripped things too tightly. Tore a letter from Robb accidentally, and then looked surprised to do it. It was almost like when they were children, playing pretend. As children it was always Knights and Damsels or something similar. This felt more like Arya’s favorite game, Cat and Mouse, with some slightly altered rules: the goal was not to catch the mouse, but to make the mouse think that he was the cat.

She and Jon had few private conversations, and they were always held in close whispers that sent Sansa’s heart racing. She felt underhanded, forced into a corner in a way she resented. It reminded her of those conversations when she had begged Theon to help her. The threat of Ramsay had been everywhere: in every wall, in every room. Winterfell had not felt like home. It felt like an endless trap that she kept falling into in her desperation to escape.

It was such a bitter thing. They had won back the castle. Ramsay had been defeated. Robb was king. Jon was staying. It should have felt like home again, but it couldn’t. Not as long as Littlefinger was still here.  

During one of those conversations, Jon had told her of a moment in the crypts. He told her sheepishly, embarrassed, plainly worried that she would be angry. He told her of Littlefinger’s taunts, and of his reminders that Sansa was a prize to be won and wed by the most worthy man. It was obvious why Littlefinger had done it: he wanted to test Jon’s reaction. He was always doing things like that. It was why Sansa had learned how to make her face into a pretty mask. Littlefinger could read so many things in the tiniest of twitches. Sometimes he even saw correctly.

Jon didn’t have that kind of practice in evading Littlefinger’s tests; he told her of his reaction. The way he shoved Littlefinger against the wall. The way he growled threats in Littlefinger’s face.

Maybe she should have been annoyed. It showed a level of care that she wanted Littlefinger to believe Jon did not have for her. Instead, it made her blood sing in her veins. He’d said all the same pretty things everyone always said about keeping her safe and protecting her. Everyone else had failed, but Jon…

Jon wanted to protect her. It wasn’t the empty courtesy of Littlefinger or the desperate promises of Ser Dontos. Even when he was supposed to be treating her with cold distance, Jon couldn’t help but act on his desire to see her safe.

It succeeded in making Littlefinger more wary, too; he only approached Sansa when Jon left the castle to go hunting with Tormund and a small party of Wildlings. It was ostensibly to try and replenish some of their stores, though Jon had initially suggested it as a way to make Littlefinger let his guard down. Sansa was pleased that it had worked. She wasn’t often glad to have been proven wrong, but she was glad that Jon was more adept at this kind of thing than she had thought he would be.

Littlefinger wasn’t the type to leave things to chance. He wanted to be sure of a good reception, and he knew there was better chance of that if Jon was away. He thought her a girl she had never been. A girl so ambitious she would do horrible things to get herself a throne. Yes, she had wanted to be queen, and yes she had gone along with his plans, but she’d never wanted power the way he thought she did. He thought her coy and sly and smarter than she let on. He thought her adept at hiding her true wants from her brother and cousin. He thought he was the only one who understood her, and he thought that she needed him.

Sansa almost never wanted to think of Cersei, but she wondered for a moment what Cersei would have to say about Lord Baelish. The thought of the queen’s scornful, wine-soaked sneering about his absurd beard and transparent fawning was almost enough to make her smile.

Almost. She kept her face blank from the moment she sensed his presence behind her.

“There have been whispers,” he said in greeting.

“There always are,” she replied. She kept her tone blank, and her eyes facing forward. As always, Littlefinger seemed to take that as permission to move even closer, his mind inventing some signs of encouragement in her closed-off manner.

“You are being cut out again,” he said. “First for a Targaryen, and now for the brother who failed you. I hate to think of how that must make you feel. Let me help you.”

“The lords have chosen Robb,” she said. She truly didn’t have to try to make herself sound dissatisfied with that. She could understand their choice. She had expected their choice. That didn’t mean it didn’t sting to think of it. It hurt when they chose Jon, and it hurt when they chose Robb as well. She still supported them. There were more important things than acknowledgement.

“He stole their sons for a personal crusade and then abandoned them for love,” Littlefinger said. “Perhaps I understand him too well, but the northern lords do not.”

He was really very close now, and she could hear the want in his voice that she hated the most. As useful as it was to her, she feared it. And with Jon and Brienne both gone, it felt more inescapable than ever.

“I know,” she managed to say. She held fast to her cloak by her sides. Her hood was still pulled up. She still wouldn’t look at him.

“This is our chance,” Littlefinger purred. “We will never have a better opportunity than this.”

“What do you propose we do?” Sansa asked.

When the conversation was at last over, Sansa made some preparations, and then she went back to her rooms. She had managed to stall Littlefinger by asking for more assurances, more proof of success before she moved against her brother and her cousin, but now at least she had some idea of his plan to win the support of the northern lords. He hadn’t given her much, and she knew that at least some of what he had given her was a test. He wasn’t entirely sure that her move with the Blackfish was a move. Littlefinger rarely did things for one reason. It was far more likely that he was doing them for two or three. So he wanted Sansa’s support, yes, and he wanted her to trust him. He also wanted to know if she was on his side. If the lords he had named as his allies were suddenly sent back home or assigned to urgent diplomatic missions that took them away from Winterfell, he would have his answer.

So she couldn’t send them away, but she could have them watched, and she could try to work on them. Littlefinger’s allies were never very loyal ones, because he usually managed to cast himself as the best of several bad options. She would simply have to make herself a better one. Some of the names, she gave to Lord Royce, who promised to see it handled. Him, she trusted to be discreet. They had spoken of the situation several times recently, and he was aware of how treacherous Littlefinger was. He was well respected even in the north, too, and a few words from him might be enough to win back the support from some of the lords Littlefinger had named.

The more questionable of his allies, Sansa gave to Lyanna Mormont, who eagerly promised to shame some more grown men when the opportunity arose. Some, Sansa wrote into a letter and sent immediately to her uncle the Blackfish, sending the raven herself when she was sure Littlefinger had gone to the hall and would not be watching. She did not tell the whole list of names to any of her three chosen allies, though she would tell them to Jon, later, when he returned. It was better to keep them split up.

Ghost had appeared as soon as Littlefinger left her, and he followed her wherever she went. It was a comfort to reach down and feel him padding beside her as she went about her day. He seemed to have a sense for when she was distressed, and he always made sure to be near.

“I still say you would have been more useful hunting,” she said, pretending at annoyance, but when she closed and locked the door of her room behind her, she went to the fire and knelt there, and she put her arms around Ghost’s neck, and she hugged him.

She could not show her fear or her weaknesses to anyone. Not Brienne. Not Jon. Not Robb. But she could show them to Ghost; Ghost would not think less of her.

Sometimes she wondered if things would have been different if Lady had not been killed. The Lannisters likely would have killed her eventually. When they arrested her father and locked her in her rooms, perhaps. Lady was good, and well behaved, but she was still a direwolf, and she would have done anything to protect Sansa. She would have attacked the guards, and then she would have died.

It was nice to think about, though. Lady beside her. Watching over her.

“Jon was lucky to have you,” she decided.

Lucky, too, that the men who killed him had been too afraid of Ghost to do the same, unlike the men who tried to kill Robb.

We are all that’s left, she thought. She didn’t know that for sure, but she told it to herself often. Reminding herself not to think of Arya surviving out there on her own, or Bran traveling somewhere in the north. Hiding and surviving. It would be too easy to hope, and she was sure that allowing that hope and then seeing it dashed would break her. We are all that’s left, and I will protect what’s mine. My family.

Outside, on the walk, when Littlefinger had spoken of Robb’s failures and Jon’s Targaryen heritage, he did his best to distance her from them. He reminded her that Robb had chosen not to save her. He reminded her that Jon had not listened to her before the battle and nearly lost the war in his haste to save Rickon. You are the only true Stark left who cares for your house’s honor, he had said. The lords will follow you if I tell them to. There is a queen in Westeros. Why not a queen in the north?

Not that Cersei was a very good example of a queen, but it was a good angle to play. Sansa sometimes imagined it. The crown upon her head. Her lords and ladies cheering for her. Shouting queen in the north in the same way they had chanted for Jon when they named him king. It was a pretty picture, but not a very clear one. Would she feel safe as queen? Or would there only be more to lose?

She used to want to be queen more than anything else in the world, but now she could hardly remember why. She had seen Cersei for the first time and thought her hopelessly beautiful. It almost hurt to look at her, to see the fine dress she wore and the elaborate hairstyle that looked like nothing Sansa had ever seen. When she complimented Sansa’s dress, Sansa floated for hours on that feeling.

Cersei was easy to hate now, particularly when Sansa remembered how afraid she had been in Kings Landing. But Cersei was easy to pity, too. Sansa had seen how displeased the queen was with her king. She saw how Cersei’s words meant nothing compared to what Robert wanted. She saw the thanklessness of ruling in the exhausted slope of her father’s shoulders. She saw the thanklessness of loyalty in the way Barristan Selmy was so carelessly dismissed after serving for years and years to protect the kings. She had been a child, then, with no real understanding of what it meant to rule. But now she knew it better. Now she knew what ruling meant.

As a child, she wanted to be queen because the queens were the ones in stories who were remembered. The queens and the warrior maids, and Sansa had no desire to be like Brienne or Arya. She didn’t have the talent for it, either. If she tried to fight, she would look ridiculous. No, it was queendom and motherhood for her. That was what she had wanted.

Now, she wondered why anyone would want to rule. She loved her position in Winterfell. She loved her people. They were still an exhausting lot, and they were only one kingdom. If you wanted to be a good ruler…

Well. Maybe that was the problem.

People like Littlefinger and Cersei, she wondered if they ever even asked themselves why. She certainly never had when it was something she wanted. As a girl, it would have been because of the songs, and when she was older it would have been because she thought it would keep her safe, but she knew better now, and she wasn’t nearly as old as either of them. Surely they must have asked themselves at some point why they wanted to rule so badly. Surely they must have asked themselves if it was worth it.

Could it really be so simple as a thirst for power? Did that thirst override all sense? She wished she could ask Littlefinger, but he would never answer her honestly. He would monologue at her for a bit about something he thought was quite clever, but he’d never tell her the truth of it.

When at last she felt calm enough, stroking Ghost’s fur through the worst of the welling panic until she was able to force it down again, Sansa rose to her feet. There was still so much to do. She would have to inform Jon about the Littlefinger conversation. She wanted to take a tour of the glass gardens before dinner so she could see how everything was growing and hopefully bolster the spirits of the workers. She wanted to take a bath. She wanted a nap.

She sat down at her desk and unlocked the inner drawer with the key she carried on a chain around her neck. There was a half-written letter to Brienne in there that she hadn’t yet finished, and there was one to Jaime Lannister as well. She had burned his last letter immediately after reading it, and she had been unsure how to respond, though she knew she should.

She was certain now that his sister didn’t have a hand in this correspondence. She had already begun to doubt, but the advice he offered in the last one…Sansa already knew Littlefinger to be a false friend, but Cersei would think her too stupid to see anything but an older man offering advice that Sansa would of course need. Cersei would delight in leaving Littlefinger to do his worst, and she would hope that Sansa would fall in the chaos that Littlefinger would be sure to bring.

Sansa smiled as she remembered Jaime’s words. They hadn’t been very subtle, but he’d tried at subtlety. And there had been an open inquiry about Brienne, which he usually avoided writing, preferring to talk in circles around it. It was almost sweet, that he was so eager for news.

Sansa knew she could not count on Jaime Lannister for anything where his sister was concerned, but it was good to think she had some level of friendship with the man. Their houses may have been enemies, but he had proven himself by warning of Littlefinger, and Sansa trusted Brienne’s judgement even if it seemed Brienne had begun to doubt her own. His letters had grown more personal, as well. Often he mocked himself in them more than he mocked her, though there was a sarcastic element to everything he wrote that reminded her of Tyrion when he was talking to the rest of his family. Not so bitter as Tyrion, maybe. But with an element of irony, especially when he wrote of the bad blood that existed between Lannister and Stark.

He doesn’t like this any more than I do, she told herself as she wrote. He wishes things could be different.

She wasn’t a foolish little girl anymore, given to fanciful notions. She’d swooned over the idea of knights and romance, but the truth of it was much worse. The Hound had scorned the idea of true knighthood, and perhaps he was right. Still. There was something so romantic about the way Jaime Lannister wrote of Brienne. He hid his yearning behind biting words and deflections, but she could read it, and she could know it.

If his sister was so easy to hate, then Jaime Lannister was perhaps as difficult. Sansa often found herself nearly laughing as she read his letters, such as the response he sent to the one she wrote questioning his strategy in jumping into a bear pit without a weapon. She would write to him regardless because she would not want to fail to take advantage of such a connection, but she was actually enjoying their correspondence. Truly, you are a genius of strategy, he had written in sarcastic reply to her mocking. No one spoke to her that way. Not deferring to her with courtly politeness, but not cruel, either. He spoke to her as an equal. Not as a little sister to protect. Not as a lady he was sworn to. And not as a pretty, empty-headed idiot. Despite the years he had on her, Jaime Lannister spoke to her in their letters with the kind of teasing camaraderie that Jon used to have with Arya, or Robb with Theon, or either of the boys to Bran and Rickon. She was not some delicate damsel to be tiptoed around. She wasn’t his enemy any longer. She was simply Sansa. She had not been allowed to be only herself in such a long time, and she needed it now more than ever.

Chapter Text

There were refugees pouring into Wintertown, pulling their carts and carriages off the road, but many of them continued on to the castle. That was good; Arya could use them to blend in on her approach.

She’d grown a lot since she was last at Winterfell, but not so much that she couldn’t pass for a child following along with her family’s wagon, and that was exactly what she did. The farmer who was driving the cart didn’t even spare her a look. That was good too. Arya liked to make friends with the people she traveled with, but she wanted to be alone for this.

She had expected more, honestly. Some big, important moment, seeing the castle for the first time in so long. Maybe she was just tired from the road. She’d done a lot of walking since she left the bodies of all those Frey men cooling in their chairs.

Or maybe it just didn’t feel like coming home quite yet because the castle looked so different from how she remembered it. She never knew it quite as well as Bran, who was always showing her new passages and secret tunnels he had discovered. They were just servant tunnels, really, but they hadn’t known that then, and they’d played at being spies, quiet and trying not to giggle and trying not to sneeze as their running footsteps kicked up dust in the old passageways. She always asked how Bran knew where he was going, and he would only shrug and lead her deeper, and she would follow, because she didn’t want him to say she was scared, even though she was, a bit, of those small narrow spaces. She never knew it quite as well as him, but she knew it well enough, and she could see now where some walls had been damaged. The gate was obviously made from fresh-cut wood, not yet aged and spotted like the old one. There was some stone that looked new, contrasted against the stones that had been there for years and years. Some of the walls had been rebuilt already, but there was a lot of work yet to do. Arya was almost afraid to go inside.

She knew she should be glad it was still standing at all. After all the wars and all the fighting, it was Sansa and Jon who ruled it now, and Arya was surprised their cold silences hadn’t just turned everything to ice. She couldn’t imagine the two of them agreeing on anything, but clearly they had, if things were already starting to be fixed.

She was only sorry she’d missed Robb. She’d heard so many rumors as she traveled, but she hadn’t believed them until she got up north and heard northmen talking about it. They weren’t the type to listen to idle gossip, and a few of them had seen him.

I saw him too, she had wanted to say. With a wolf’s head. But she didn’t, because she wanted to hope, and then she wanted to believe. But by the time she got up close, the stories were saying that Robb had already left to travel to Dragonstone. A widow Arya had walked with a little ways was telling her all about the trip King Robb was taking to see the dragon queen. If only she had been a bit faster, maybe she could have gone with him.

Though now that she was back within the walls of Winterfell, she wasn’t sure she would have wanted to. She had been away for so long. She had forgotten how it felt to be in a place that was home. There had been places over the years since she left that she felt safe. Places where she felt welcome. They weren’t the same as this. She breathed in the air. It tasted of the snow that would fall later in the evening. The clouds were gathered overhead, and the farmers and the stonemasons grumbled about the turn in the weather, but Arya Stark breathed it all in, and she remembered, and she was herself again. Even more herself than she had been before. 

She laughed, and the farmers and stonemasons probably thought her mad. Let them. She wasn’t mad at all.

A snow-white shape bounded out of the gate that led to the godswood, and Arya had only enough time to drop to one knee before Ghost was upon her, wagging his tail and licking at her face. She giggled happily, and she threw her arms around his great furry body, and she closed her eyes.

She was home.

She followed Ghost to the godswood, knowing that he would lead her to Jon. She remembered all those times she and Bran lurked around in the passages. Bran would cause some kind of commotion in the hall to distract the septa and help Arya escape her lessons, and then the two of them would spend the rest of day playing Disappear, a game that basically involved avoiding any adults or older siblings as long as possible so they wouldn’t have to go back to stupid learning.

Except Disappear had an Exception rule: if sneaking around meant that they had a chance to scare someone, they always took it, even if it meant getting caught. Sneaking up on their siblings and jumping out at them, or knocking over something when someone thought they were alone. The household hated them. Their parents despaired of them. Their siblings screeched after them.

She crept along after Ghost, both of them near-silent through the trees, aided by all the snow on the ground. Maybe she was imagining the mischievous creeping gait that Ghost adopted, like a stalking predator, but she didn’t think so. Ghost knew how to play.

Arya was ready to play too. Or she thought she was. But she drew up short when she actually saw him.

She hadn’t thought…she knew that it would be good to see her brother again, but to actually see him. She hadn’t thought this far. She hadn’t thought about what he would look like. Snug in a fur coat. He looked almost like father. Darker hair. Longer hair. Curly, too. But he was wearing it pulled back the way father used to, and father always used to stand at the heart tree and pray, just like Jon was doing. He looked…he was father come again.

Ghost turned and looked back at her, wagging his tail, and Arya closed her eyes. She allowed herself several moments to feel it. Drink it in. Home. I’m home. I am with them again.

She opened her eyes. She dropped back down into her crouch, and she crept up behind him, drawing Needle from its sheath.

Ghost whined.

Jon turned, and Arya glared at his direwolf. I wasn’t going to hurt him, you stupid dog, she thought. So much for being as clever as a person. A person would know what a prank looked like. Nymeria would have known.

But her anger melted, because Jon turned more fully when he saw her, and his guarded expression fell open, and she saw him go instantly from the man he had become to the boy she remembered him being.

She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. She was Arya Stark of Winterfell, and she wouldn’t cry.

She launched herself up into his arms, dropping Needle into the snow, and Jon caught her just like she knew he would. He hugged her tight, crushing her against him. He hadn’t gotten so tall, but he was still taller than her. Big enough to spin her around as he hugged her. He was laughing, but it was thick, choked with tears, and she knew that he was crying, too.

“I was trying to scare you,” she finally said. Her voice wavered only a little. “But Ghost didn’t think it was so funny.”

“Good boy,” Jon said. His voice wavered a lot. He set her down at last, and he looked at her. His hands were still on her shoulders, like he was afraid to let her go. “You’re here.”

“I thought that was obvious,” Arya said, and Jon laughed at her. He looked more tired that she remembered. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a furrow in his brow that looked permanent. She wanted to make him smile again. “I thought you’d be taller by now.”

“Aye,” Jon laughed. “Me too. I thought you’d have grown as tall as Sansa.”

“Has she gotten even taller, then?” Arya sighed. Of course Sansa was tall. She’d probably gotten even prettier, too. It would be so like her. 

“She’s taller than me,” Jon admitted. “You haven’t seen her yet?”

“Ghost led me straight here. I just arrived.”

“Gods, look at you,” Jon said. His smile was growing, like the shock was wearing off and reality was setting in.

“And,” Arya said, bending down to pull Needle out of the snow, giving Ghost one more little glare for good measure while her back was turned to Jon. She turned back to brandish the sword, and Jon laughed happily. She didn’t remember him ever laughing so hard when they were children, but maybe she just forgot. She found that she had forgotten a lot of things that she was only now remembering, now that she was back here.

“You still have it,” he said, taking it to look at it. “In good condition, too.”

“We’ve been parted a few times, but not for long,” Arya said, breezily, as if it was nothing. Jon handed it back to her, and she tucked it back at her side, where it belonged. “It was always there to…remind me. Of who I really was. Of my family.”

Jon smiled, but there was something wrong behind his eyes. Arya didn’t want to know that it was there. She wanted to be herself, Arya Stark. She didn’t want to be No One. She wanted to forget No One completely and the things that No One had learned. But she couldn’t. That was in her now, too.

“What is it?” she asked. Jon gestured her closer so that they could sit together on the stone beside the pool that their father always used to sit on.

“There’s something I should tell you,” he said. “You’re going to find out anyway. It’s all anyone talks about lately. That’s why I’m out here, actually. Get a break from it. I know it’s going to be difficult to hear, but…”

“Jon,” Arya said, alarmed. “Just say it. I don’t need a whole introduction.”

Jon smiled a bit wider, though it was strained and a bit sad and a bit hard to look at.

“I’m not your brother,” he said. Arya’s brain rejected that notion immediately. “I’m your cousin. Robb spoke to Howland Reed. He was father’s…your father’s friend.”

“He was your father too,” Arya insisted. Jon’s smile had fully faded by now.

“He wasn’t,” Jon said. “Not…not at first. I was born of your aunt Lyanna and Rhaegar Targaryen.”

Arya stood up. She faced him, her arms folded across her chest. She considered him. He wasn’t lying. She could tell that immediately. He wouldn’t, anyway. This wasn’t the type of prank he would play.

“Well, fine,” she said. “But you’re still my brother.”

Jon laughed again, but it was quieter this time. Less mirthful. More…relieved, maybe.

“I should have known that’s how you would react,” he said, and Arya arched one eyebrow in the way she remembered her mother used to do.

“You should have,” she agreed. “What else is there to say?” Jon hesitated, and she zeroed in on it. She couldn’t help it. “What?” she asked. “Is it Sansa?”

Jon was plainly alarmed by that, and he forgot to try and hide his emotions.

“What? What about Sansa?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I figured that’s why you looked so grim.” She didn’t want to mention the fact that Sansa always called him half-brother and never let anyone forget that he was a bastard, hiding behind all those lady courtesies she was so obsessed with, not realizing that Jon was the best person in the whole world. She figured that would be rude to remind him about. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t remember, anyway.

“I always look grim,” he said. She shook her head.

“No,” she said fondly. “Not always.”

“There’s…a lot involved,” Jon said slowly. “The north isn’t happy. I thought I should leave, but…”

“This is your home,” Arya said, before she could stop herself. “You shouldn’t have to leave if you don’t want to.”

“That’s what Sansa said. And Robb. They convinced me to stay.”

Again the oddness at the mention of Sansa. Softer than Arya was expecting. Maybe she had to re-evaluate what it had been like for the two of them. It couldn’t have been easy, and maybe even Sansa saw Jon’s worth after a while.

“Good,” she said. “If you had left, I would have had to go after you, and I’ve already come quite a long way.”

“I can’t wait to hear about it,” Jon said. He hugged her again, and Arya allowed herself to sink into it.

He’s still my brother, she thought, satisfied. That hasn’t changed. The rest of it doesn’t matter. I’m not exactly the same person I was before, either. I don’t need him to be anything but Jon.

Arya wasn’t afraid, exactly, to see Sansa again. She’d felt fear lots of different times, in lots of different ways, and she knew that this wasn’t it. It was just…wariness. She didn’t know what would happen.

She was so happy to be home. She didn’t want Sansa to ruin it by being the same as before. Everything Arya did had been wrong. Everything she said had been stupid. Everything had been childish or silly or annoying.

She wanted to yell at Sansa for not saying anything about Joffrey when everyone asked her what happened by the water that day, and she wanted to say she was sorry for getting Lady killed, and she wanted to yell at her about standing up there with the queen and everyone and being too stupid to realize that Joffrey wasn’t going to be merciful with father, and she wanted to apologize for leaving Kings Landing without trying to get her out.

She hadn’t heard everything, she knew. There were so many stories, and a lot of them sounded silly and a lot of them she knew weren’t true. But some of them had to be, surely. And the things those stories said about Sansa, about what she had been through…

Would Sansa be angry? Or would Sansa make her angry? Or would Sansa be willing to just…forget? Now that Arya was back.

She didn’t know. Her feet dragged as she walked up to the rooms where Jon said Sansa would be. She’d put it off as long as she could, staying out in the godswood and talking to Jon, but he’d eventually convinced her to go.

Sansa’s rooms had been their mother’s rooms before, though Catelyn had scarcely used them. Arya could remember after Rickon was born. Sansa had already been lying in the bed next to their mother, curled up beside her, petting Rickon’s head. Arya had been too scared to get close until Sansa waved her closer. She’d gotten all soft and mushy about the baby, and it made her soft and mushy about Arya, too. She’d pulled Arya in, wrapped her arm around her, and Arya had snuggled up with the three of them.

There was a lump in her throat when she finally raised her fist to knock on Sansa’s door.

She wasn’t much used to knocking anymore. But Jon had said not to startle Sansa, and there had been something warning in his expression. Arya knew that he wasn’t just saying it because it wasn’t polite. There was something sadder, there, and it reminded Arya of the worst stories she’d heard when she was traveling.

“Yes?” came Sansa’s voice. Arya had almost been worried that she would sound too different. Or, worse, that she would sound like their mother. But she didn’t. Just one word, and Arya knew she was still Sansa. No matter what had happened to her, no matter how much she had changed. She was still Sansa, and Arya was still Arya, and Jon was still Jon.

She opened the door, and Sansa turned from where she was sitting at the desk. Her eyes widened first. Arya saw the way they swept over her whole body, like she wasn’t sure what she was seeing.

“Arya,” she breathed.

Then she was standing in haste, and she was crossing the room. She had gotten even taller, and even prettier than she was as a girl. She was wearing a dark blue dress that looked like something their mother might have worn, except there were wolves embroidered on the collar. Sansa had always been good at embroidery.

Arya realized that she was just standing there like a fool, smiling up at her sister, and Sansa faltered to a stop, and she had her hands clutched together in front of her body.

Sansa was nervous too.

Arya laughed. She couldn’t help it. The fact that they were both so nervous to see each other again. That they were both convinced that something bad was going to happen. What were they so worried about? They were sisters.

Sansa laughed too, giddy and breathless. Arya closed the gap between them, and she flung her arms around her sister’s middle, hugging her tight. Sansa’s arms wrapped around her. She had always given good hugs, Sansa. Arya had prized them all the more for how infrequently she had received them.

“You’re home,” Sansa said, and Arya nodded against Sansa’s chest.

“I am,” she said. “Finally.”

Sansa’s lips were in her hair, and Arya could have cried, but she didn’t. She only smiled, and she closed her eyes, and they stood there for quite a while.

Sansa had some wine brought up, and they sat by the fire and talked. Arya didn’t tell Sansa very much, not wanting to upset her, but then wished that she had said more when Sansa told her own story. Sansa looked nervous a few times, like she wasn’t sure how Arya would react, but she didn’t hold anything back.

“I killed the Freys,” Arya said, after Sansa’s voice had trailed off, small and nervous when she revealed that she had fed Ramsay Bolton to his dogs. Sansa met Arya’s eyes, her own widening. “I killed that nasty old man, and I killed his sons. They deserved it.”

Sansa nodded. She didn’t hesitate. Arya wondered if she was scared.

“They killed mother,” Sansa said.

“They tried to kill Robb. And they killed Robb’s wife. We never even got to meet her.”

“And her babe,” Sansa said miserably.

“They were going to be rewarded. Him and all his sons. Their family name continuing while ours died. The world isn’t fair when things like that happen.”

“The world isn’t fair. Things like that happen all the time.”

“Yes they do. But not that day.”

Sansa smiled a little, and no, it wasn’t fear at all. It was admiration in Sansa’s gaze.

“Not that day,” she repeated quietly.

“I learned a lot when I was away,” Arya said. “I learned how to kill a man. You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not. I knew that if you’d survived, you would have had to fight for it.”

“I didn’t even make it out of the city without…there was a boy. He tried to turn me in. I was so scared. I just…I stuck him with Needle. He bled and died there, on the floor of the stables.”

“Good,” Sansa insisted, reaching for Arya’s hand across the table. She held on tight, her eyes big and blue and filled with emotion that she was plainly used to hiding. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Arya. I’m so glad.”

“I’m glad you fed that monster to his dogs.”

“I am too.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad about it.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

Sansa looked at Arya curiously, and Arya looked into the fire. She didn’t want to scare her sister. She didn’t want to make her sister uncomfortable. But she wanted Sansa to know.

“I learned a lot of things,” she said. “How to change faces. How to tell if someone’s lying.”

“Change faces?” Sansa asked. Arya shook her head.

“I won’t do it unless I need to. But I was with the Faceless Men, in Braavos. They taught me. And they taught me the Game of Faces.”

“That sounds…” Sansa started, but didn’t finish. She took another sip of wine. She was trying to be polite. Arya smiled at her. A little of the old Sansa, for just a second. It was odd that it could be a relief.

“I’ll show you,” she said. What are you doing? she wondered at herself. “Do you want to take the crown from Robb?”

Sansa didn’t choke on her wine. She didn’t react in quite such a dramatic way. But she stared, frozen, her wine glass only halfway from her lips. She swallowed and put the cup down. She faced Arya warily. Don’t be afraid, Arya wanted to say, but she didn’t. Maybe Sansa should be afraid. It depended on her answer.

“No,” Sansa said. “I used to think I did. I only want us to all be safe. Together. Home. I want us to be a family again.”

Arya smiled.

“Me too,” she said. Sansa wasn’t lying. “Were you jealous when they made Jon and Robb king instead of you?”

Sansa sighed.

“Yes,” she said. She wasn’t lying then, either.

“Even though you don’t want to be queen?” Arya asked. Sansa shrugged.

“You asked. I told you the truth,” she said. She was settling now, trusting Arya more. It made Arya’s chest hurt for some reason.

“Sometimes people don’t make sense,” Arya allowed. “Do you and Jon get along now?”

“Most of the time,” Sansa said. She was smiling. She seemed to think that the questions were over, or that they were normal questions. Her guard was down. Arya didn’t want to see it as an exploitable weakness, but it was.

“Were you glad when you found out that Jon’s our cousin?”

Sansa froze again. The trust was gone again. Arya’s chest hurt even more now. Why had she asked? She should have assumed the answer. She shouldn’t have asked. It made everything worse.

“No,” Sansa whispered.

“You’re lying,” Arya replied. There was a piece of her that loved it. A piece that was still that little girl who saw Sansa praised for everything even when she was the one being mean. Just because she did what the adults told her to do and never wanted anything else, everyone said how good she was. No one would have ever accused Sansa of lying when they were girls, and it was sweet now to know that she was. But there was a bigger part of Arya that felt sick. That wasn’t them anymore. Why was she doing this?

“I’m not. It was awful for Jon.”

“But you were still glad.”

“Arya, please.” Sansa’s eyes were wider now. She had this panicked look. Arya could see it in the way her mask had fractured and her lips were trembling as she pushed them together and breathed out through her nose.  Like a frightened horse. That was what she looked like.

She’s not a horse. She’s my sister.

“He was never your brother, was he?”

“Yes, he was,” Sansa said. She wasn’t lying. Or not really. There was a trembling there, something just on the edge of falseness. If she was playing the game for real, Arya would ask for more. Press onward.

But this isn’t for real. You don’t need to ask her anymore questions. You’re scaring her.

“But is he still your brother now?”

Sansa stood up. She walked to the window. She had her hands clasped together again, the way she had when she didn’t know how Arya would greet her. She had slumped a bit, before, but now her posture was back to being completely correct.

“If you can tell when people are lying, I may need your help,” she said.

“I asked you a question.”

“A horrible question, with an answer I can’t give you.”

“Because the answer is no. You still hate Jon. After everything.”

Sansa’s expression was too open to miss, then. Incredulous. Confused.

“I don’t hate Jon,” she said, and she wasn’t lying. Her eyes were on Arya’s face. Arya couldn’t understand. Sansa was waiting for her to understand with a look like she was expecting to be hit. “Please,” she said. “Don’t tell him.”

“I don’t understand,” Arya said.

“It was Cersei,” Sansa said, turning away, looking back at the window. Her arms were wrapped around her middle now, keeping her safe. “It had to be Cersei. I was too long around her, and some of her seeped into me like a disease. Or it broke me. Or maybe it was Ramsay that did that.”

“I don’t understand,” Arya said again, louder. She felt like a child throwing a tantrum, and maybe she was, but it was just…it was Jon, and it was Sansa. But she wasn’t lying. She wasn’t lying. She thought she was sick and wrong and hateful and broken. She thought Cersei had poinsoned her. She wasn’t lying about that at all.

“You think I do?” Sansa asked. Her expression went very nearly blank, and she closed her eyes and shook her head. She looked disgusted with herself. She looked confused, too. “Please, Arya. I’m begging you. Please. Don’t tell him.”

Arya nodded. She wouldn’t. Jon would never believe her if she did, anyway, and Sansa looked so afraid. Arya hadn’t meant to scare her. She just wanted to know if Sansa still hated Jon. She just wanted to know.

You wanted the answer to be yes, she reminded herself. Sick with the knowledge that she had pushed too far. You wanted to be the only one who loved Jon, still. Now there’s this. Why did you have to ask her?

She didn’t know how to put the knowledge where it belonged inside her. She knew it was true. She knew Sansa hated herself for it. She knew that her sister was close to tears. She knew that she had done this. She had scared Sansa, made her fear that Arya would tell someone, or maybe made her fear that Arya would hate her for it.

“You said you needed my help,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “What can I do?”

Chapter Text

Being at home had helped Robb return to himself. He had dreaded being crowned again, but knowing that he had a responsibility to his people helped him stay more focused than he had been since the wedding. Sansa and Jon kept him present, and they gave him a purpose, and his weariness faded as the weeks passed. He’d been worried that leaving them would send him spiraling again, but it hadn’t. It was easy to remember himself when he looked at Brienne. When he spoke with her, when he sparred with her, when he rode next to her and shared stories with her. He was himself again, wholly.  

Brienne was a natural fighter, but she was a well-trained one, too. She told him stories about Ser Goodwin, the man who taught her everything. Goodwin had ignored the people who said he shouldn’t teach the heiress of Tarth how to be more like a man. It was easy to imagine Brienne as a child. She was tall even then, she said, and that was easy to imagine, too. A tall, awkward child who knew already that she would make a better Warrior than a Maiden.

“I wish you’d have been raised in Winterfell,” he found himself saying one day, and she seemed startled by the idea.

“Why?” she asked.

“We could have trained together,” he said. She laughed. She’d gotten more casual with him, in the sense that she only called him your grace half as much as she used to. But her laughter was still rare enough that it startled a smile out of him every time. Then she faltered.

“You’re serious,” she said.

“Of course I am! Jon and I would have loved it.”

Theon too, though Theon would have said enough cruel things about Brienne’s looks that it might have been a mess. Best not to think about Theon, anyway.

“Your mother never would have allowed it,” Brienne said.

“She accepted you as her sworn sword, didn’t she?” Robb asked.

“Yes, but I was already ruined then,” Brienne said grimly, as if it was obvious. It made Robb laugh, though it also made him a bit sad for her, for Brienne as a child.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked. She shrugged one shoulder, a sort of girlish gesture that looked odd on her frame, but made Robb think of Sansa.

“My septa certainly thought so. She never approved of anything I did.”

“Mm. Arya was the same. She was constantly getting in trouble. She hated all the lessons and the rules and the embroidery and whatever else ladies fill their time with.”

“I didn’t hate that stuff at all,” Brienne remembered with a quiet laugh. “I tried my hardest. I was just never very good at any of it. I was too clumsy. My fingers were too big. Everything I tried, I did wrong. She hated me for it.”

“Well, Septa Mordane would have been a bit more patient,” Robb insisted. “As long as you were trying.” He wasn’t sure if that was true, but it seemed encouraging, and liked the idea of Brienne growing up around Winterfell. Sparring with he and Jon. Teaching Arya when Arya was big enough. Catelyn had adored and pitied and been fascinated by Brienne, he remembered, and he knew that she would have welcomed the chance for such a ward.

“It’s a pleasant idea,” Brienne allowed with a small smile. “Maybe you’d be a better fighter if I had.”

He laughed at her then, and he picked up his blunted sword again. Some of his men were watching, pretending not to be amused as he flourished his blade. He had never felt so alive since he had been brought back from the drink of death. He pointed his sword in Brienne’s direction.

“All right, come on,” he said. “Beat some more sense into me. I’ll never improve if you don’t.”

She did, quite handily, and afterward they sat beside each other on a shared log and passed a waterskin between them. Brienne was looking thoughtfully across the fire at Podrick, who was chatting with a few other squires.

“He’s a good lad,” Robb said.

“He is,” Brienne agreed. “I wonder if I should have left him at Winterfell.”

“He would have hated that,” Robb pointed out, and Brienne hummed in agreement.

“We don’t know what we’re walking into,” she said. She looked directly at him as she said it. She had gotten better at that since they’d started on the road from Winterfell, and he was glad for it, even if it also meant it was easier for her to question him.

“No,” he agreed. “Do you wish I’d left you in Winterfell?”

Brienne considered. She still didn’t look away.

“No,” she said, thoughtful, as if she was surprised. Robb grinned at her.

“Good,” he said. “Me neither.”

The first time Robb saw Daenerys Targaryen, he thought of Talisa.

It wasn’t that they looked at all alike, and it wasn’t that Daenerys reminded him of Talisa in any way. He entered the throne room on Dragonstone, and a pretty woman who stood at the bottom of the dais began to list off the dragon queen’s titles, and Robb thought of the first time he met his future wife. She had been covered in blood, exhausted and overworked, and he had never seen anybody more beautiful.

Daenerys Targaryen was beautiful too. She sat on the throne with a cool, detached grace that was regal. Queenly. A strong first impression. It was also remote. Impossible to reach. She towered above he and Davos and even Brienne. Robb looked up at her and thought of Cersei’s cold courtesies to he and his family when she visited Winterfell for the first and last time.

Talisa should have been queen for longer than she was, he thought. Talisa would have been warm.

But Talisa was dead, and this was the queen he was expected to kneel to. He watched her as Davos stumblingly made his own introductions. Daenerys smiled with poorly disguised mirth to hear them, and whether it was that Davos was so unpolished or that Robb’s list of titles was so small compared to her own, it didn’t do her any favors. Talisa would have...

Stop. Talisa is dead. It doesn’t matter that she would have smiled with encouragement and nodded for Davos to go on. It doesn’t matter that she wouldn’t have needed to raise herself up to proclaim herself queen. It doesn’t matter that she would have laughed and waved off any attempts at giving her titles. Talisa is dead. Daenerys is the one you have to deal with.

After Davos spoke, there was a silence that stretched. Daenerys waited. Her smile was small, plastered-on. Expectant. Fine. He would speak first, if that was what she wanted.

“The north is no longer a part of Westeros,” he said. He heard Brienne breathing in sharply behind him, preparing for a reaction that Robb hoped not to receive. “We declared our independence during the reign of Joffrey Baratheon, and we mean to keep that independence. I will gladly support your claim as the rightful queen of Westeros, but I will not bend the knee or cede the north to your rule.”

His words echoed in the cavernous throne room. Dark and unwelcoming and a stark reminder of what had happened to the last members of his family to stand against a Targaryen monarch. He remembered when he felt like a child in his father’s cloak, trying to deliver speeches before battles, or trying to wrangle his arguing lieutenants as they planned their next attack. All of the men would look down at him, and some of them grumbled and some of them resented him, but all of them listened, though he felt no bigger than little Lyanna Mormont.

He didn’t feel small anymore. He didn’t feel so young, either, though he knew Davos and even occasionally Brienne looked at him as though he was. He felt like a king for once, standing before her. This dragon queen was young, too.

Young and offended. She arched her eyebrows prettily and turned to look at Tyrion Lannister, who wore his golden Hand of the Queen pin proudly. He had greeted Robb earlier at the docks, and tried to make conversation about their families until he recognized the danger in Robb’s expression when he strayed too close to the topic of his marriage to Sansa.

Robb had been determined to be blank, and kind, and courteous, but arriving on Dragonstone had done away with that plan. He had been so obviously surrounded by his family’s enemies. It must have been by design, meant to intimidate the fool northern king. It seemed like something Tyrion would do. Ironborn ships patrolled the coast, though Tyrion had mentioned that Theon and his sister were both engaged in taking back Pyke. There was Tyrion himself, of course. And Varys, who used to serve Robert Baratheon, and had shifted loyalties. There were soldiers wearing the rose of Highgarden. They had been enemies, too, fighting for more than one of Robb’s foes. They had all been stationed along the walk from the dock to the throne room. Reminders that it would be a difficult war, if Robb refused to cooperate.

There were no more Freys, and there were no more Boltons. And it was something that he didn’t have to see the Lannister lion draped on any tent pavilions. Only one lion, greatly diminished, standing now looking at his queen with what looked like real fear. Was she a fearsome sort of queen, then? Robb found that he wasn’t afraid of her, but that might have been down to arrogance. Or perhaps it was more of the unwillingness to fight for his own life that had plagued him during his recovery.

“I should have said sooner,” Tyrion started, hesitating, looking away from Daenerys and meeting Robb’s eyes with an attempted servility that felt horrible and awkward from the older man. “How sorry I am for the part my family played in the, well…”

“The Red Wedding,” Robb said. He ticked one eyebrow up, the way his mother used to. “I’m told that’s what they call it.”

“Yes,” Tyrion said. He cleared his throat. “I wanted to express my sympathies, and to ensure you that…”

“You were serving the crown, then, weren’t you?” Robb asked. He knew, of course. Sansa had already told him exactly what happened when news of the doomed wedding reached the capital. He knew even that Tyrion had shown Sansa some sympathy, and that he had berated his nephew for taunting her about it.

It wasn’t enough. It was something, but it wasn’t enough.

“Yes. I…”

“Your father had taken back his seat as Hand of the King, but you were still there. Married to my little sister against her will.”

Tyrion’s face had grown pale. Robb couldn’t quite muster sympathy. It was curious to feel so detached from his emotions again, after weeks of feeling like himself. He wasn’t particularly angry. He didn’t even think he hated Tyrion very much. The worst of the Lannisters was already dead, and Tyrion had done the job. Joffrey was dead too, and though Tyrion had not committed the crime, there was a reason those rumors were so prevalent; Tyrion hadn’t been fond of his nephew. But Robb would not bend to the dragon queen. He would continue to fight for the independence of the north. He would not be cowed by a list of titles and a tacit show of strength. If he needed to air his grievances to get the point across, then that was what he would do. He could question it later. He could be frightened of reprisal later. He couldn’t hesitate now.

“My father,” Tyrion started. Robb laughed. The sound echoed even louder than his words.

“Shall we talk about fathers? Mine was attacked in the street by your brother. He was injured, and held prisoner. I called my banners to get him back. Peace could have been possible, then. But my father was beheaded on the order of your nephew and your sister.”

“I am not my family,” Tyrion said. “I have done my best to help yours.”

“Your best, was it? Or just enough to feel like you were at least better than them?”

“It was war, Robb,” Tyrion explained with evident frustration.

“Your grace,” Brienne snapped. Tyrion threw up his hands. Daenerys watched all of it impassively. As much as this was mostly performance, Robb did feel the slight stirrings of anger, then.

“It was war? Is that it? Is that how your father justified the murders of Elia Martell and her children?” he asked. The expression on the dragon queen's face wavered slightly. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or just surprised. “Is that how Theon Greyjoy, another of your allies, justified betraying my family?”

Silence greeted that particular pronouncement. Good. They were beginning to understand that it wouldn’t be enough to placate the King in the North’s temper. There were reasons enough for him to refuse to kneel, and few enough reasons for him to trust. If she wanted to force the issue, she would have to force the issue. He wouldn’t let her think she was on high ground. She could sit as far above him on that throne as she wanted. She could list all the titles she had. She could make up fifty more. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be impressed by the threats of a conqueror, and he wouldn’t kneel to just any queen. Not even one with three dragons. If she wanted to take his crown, she would take his crown, but his people and her people would know it to be by force.

He took a deep, performative breath.

“My wife,” he said. “My mother. And my unborn child. All were killed because of Lannisters. My father was killed by Lannisters. My sister was married twice to my family’s enemies, the second time to a man who was such a monster that she and Theon risked their lives to jump from the walls of Winterfell because they would have rather died than stay under his rule.” He met the eyes of the queen. She seemed rattled by his outburst, though her chin still lifted with stiffened pride when he looked at her. “I apologize, your grace, for my harshness,” he said. “But I have only just been reunited with my sister after years apart, and it is still difficult to talk about. I came here to negotiate, and I will negotiate. The north would be glad to join your cause against the Lannister queen, but I will not bend the knee, and I will not forsake the independence that my family and my people have fought and died for. They have entrusted it to me, and I will not give it up.”

Daenerys stood, and she walked gracefully down the steps until she was standing level with him.

“I apologize,” she said. Her voice was clear and low and kind, and she ignored the surprise and confusion of her advisors behind her as she took the final step off the dais. “I know something of forced marriages, and my every sympathy is with your sister. Tyrion has no intention of pressing his claim to her hand. You have my word.”

Surprised by the earnestness of her address, Robb nodded.

“Thank you, your grace,” he said.

“Perhaps it would be better to meet tomorrow, when you aren’t so fresh from the road,” Daenerys continued. “And in a less formal setting, without so many eyes.”

Something sparkled in her, then. Some mirth. Could she tell that his anger had been exaggerated? Or was she merely realizing that the formal audience had been a mistake? He dipped his head in acknowledgement, and she held his gaze.

Then she turned back to Tyrion and the beautiful translator, and she gestured to them. Wordlessly, they followed her out of the room. The rest of her people stayed, watching the northern party as they were led from the room by smiling handmaidens who did not speak to them.

“You know, that went better than I expected it would,” Davos said.

Chapter Text

Dany kept her calm until she was back in the war room, and only Tyrion was with her.

She dismissed Missandei and Grey Worm both at the door with a silent nod, sending them on their way. She could feel her anger rising within her, and it was an anger that was all for her Hand; she did not want the others to witness it.

Dany had been angry with Tyrion before, but her embarrassment made it sharper. She felt a stinging heat across her face that spread and deepened as she swallowed back her harshest words and forced herself to be level. I must be composed, she thought. I must…but it was no use. She was not meant to be so contained.

“I looked a fool in front of the man you insist we need as an ally,” she said. Her rage quivered in her voice, and it was made worse by the fact that with her humiliation still on her, it sounded weak to her own ears. Quailing, like she used to sound when she was a little girl. She wasn’t a little girl any longer. She was a Khaleesi. She was the rightful queen of the seven kingdoms, no matter what Robb Stark and his band of northern rebels thought. She could not afford to look weak or childish, and that was exactly what her anger made her seem. Robb Stark had delivered a scathing address and had not once seemed anything but righteous. That was the kind of poise she needed to have. That was the kind of delivery that made people listen.

She swallowed her anger. She pushed it down.

“I didn’t think it would be like that,” Tyrion murmured, his eyes downcast.

Even her anger could not entirely quell her mirth at that, and a smile came to her face unbidden. Wry and dry and irritated, but a smile all the same. She sat down at the war table with a sigh. She felt anger still, and embarrassment, but the danger had passed. As always, it left her feeling wary and a bit shaken.

Was that what the Kingslayer saw before he slew my father? she often wondered. Was he afraid of my father like Tyrion was just afraid of me?

But no. She was not her father. And she was no longer a young girl playing at ruling, and she was no longer a Khaleesi of the Dothraki. They may have valued rage and strength and the releasing of the fire within her, but the Westerosi would want a different sort of ruler. They were a different sort of people. If they were to be hers, she needed to remember that her father had thrown tantrums, too.

With her anger tucked safely away, she had room within herself to look back on her first meeting with Robb Stark with more objective eyes. She could see him, standing at the foot of her throne. Looking up at her. His eyes had already been tight with tension and distaste. It had gone wrong right from the start. Perhaps it had gone wrong from the moment she’d had Tyrion summon him, but she wouldn’t so quickly write it off as unsalvageable. She thought back to the many rulers she had known. The many wealthy men and women who had courted her for her dragons or had sneered at her for her youth. She had known so many. Surely by now she had some idea of how she wanted to rule instead.

“Treating it as a ceremony was a mistake,” she said. “I need to earn his trust first, before I make any demands for his fealty. And even then…”

“His family died for northern independence, and these northerners are a stubborn lot. I don’t know that it will be so easy. Even if he does make common cause with you. Even if he does support you. If you expect to rule the north at the end, more will be required.”

“More,” Daenerys said. “Like what?”

Tyrion hesitated, but evidently thought better of suggesting what he was about to.

“I don’t know, your grace,” he said instead. “Let’s recover from one of my disastrous suggestions before we go spinning headlong into another.”

She did laugh, then, relieved to find that her anger with Tyrion was mostly faded. Her embarrassment, however, lingered. She wished not for the first time for the presence of Jorah Mormont. He would have better been able to prepare her for the arrival of Robb Stark. He would have told her that Stark needed to see her good heart, not displays of power. Would she have listened to him? She liked to think so. Tyrion’s idea had seemed to make sense at the time, though.

People know the Targaryens, she had told herself when she was sitting on her throne. He will see me, and he will know I am one of them. Not a beggar any longer, but a queen.

But it would have been better to be a beggar than an unjust queen. Better a beggar who was proud of where she had come from and not a queen lauded for the circumstances of her birth. Yes, that would have been the way to win over Lord Stark. Tyrion’s idea had placed her so high as to be out of reach. No wonder the northerners had been unimpressed. They had split from the rest of the seven kingdoms because of Joffrey Baratheon and his mother. From what Daenerys had heard from Tyrion about both of them, they were lofty and imperious sorts who always needed to show their power. It had been so obviously the wrong play to do exactly what they would have done.

“What do you think your sister is doing right now?” she asked. Tyrion seemed wary about the sudden change in conversation, which she could hardly blame him for. “Do you think she is meeting with her people? Do you think she is sitting with them as their equal and listening to their concerns? Do you think she is spending any time wondering about where to get food for them? Or do you think she has only surrounded herself with advisors who praise her every choice and never question her?”

“Are you sure you’ve never met my sister?” Tyrion asked.

“I can’t be like your sister, Tyrion. I can’t be like my father, either. That isn’t going to win us any favors, and I don’t want to be like them. I want to rule fairly. I want my people to love me.”

“I think every ruler starts out with that thought.”

“Do you?”

“The better ones.”

“You keep telling me how special I am. Maybe I will be the one to actually stick to it.”

Tyrion smiled a little.

“Maybe,” he said, though she could see he doubted. “Ruling is about…it’s about realizing what you can and cannot do for people. The people don’t care about you. They don’t love you. They love the figurehead. They love the prosperity that the figurehead brings. Even if you spoke to them. Sat down with every person in your kingdom and told them your story. Even if you justified your every action. It only matters until the prosperity stops, and then you’re the wicked cunt who stole their gold and starved their children. You have brought a foreign army to Westeros. War means that Westerosi will die by that foreign army. And I know that you’ve done what you can, but men are men, and men are monsters. We both know this. There will be rapes. There will be pillaging. There will be killing of smallfolk. Those people you leave behind after your armies have razed their villages and stolen their women, they aren’t going to love you. Daenerys, your grace, I don’t say this to say that you cannot be a good queen. I say this to say that being a good queen and being a loved queen are…it isn’t impossible. But you weren’t born a queen. To take Westeros back in your family’s name, you will have to make enemies of the great houses who stand against you, and you will have to make enemies of the smallfolk who serve them.”

“So I shouldn’t even try? That’s your advice? Just do whatever it takes to see myself on the throne? Let the people hate me. Let them rage against me. It won’t matter, because I’m in power? That’s a remarkably Lannister answer from you, Tyrion.”

She expected him to be annoyed by that, but he only smiled.

“Maybe,” he admitted. “It isn’t one I’m proud to give. But it’s the right one.”

“No. I don’t accept that. To accept that would mean accepting that I’m not any different from any other would-be ruler. Not my father. Not your sister. Not Robb Stark. Not Robert Baratheon.”

“You are different from all of them,” Tyrion sighed.

“Why? Because I have dragons? Is that to be my legacy? Winning through fear and fire? I don’t want that.”

“There may not be another way to win.”

“May not,” Dany repeated stubbornly. “And yet there may be. I don’t want to be just another queen. I want to break the wheel.”

“Why do you want to be queen?” Tyrion asked suddenly. He seemed more curious than the frustration she had expected. “Your motivation. If you boiled it down to the very bottom, what would you say? Why do you want to be queen? Think about it, first.”

Because it is my birthright, Dany thought. That was the first answer that came to mind. But she was willing to humor Tyrion. He said to think about it, and so she did. Beyond just the reflexive answer that she wanted to give, why did she want to be queen? She wanted to be queen to avenge her family, perhaps. She wanted to be queen to make things better for everyone. That was a good answer. It was the answer that she wanted to give. But she considered further. Did she need to be queen to make things better? She had tried, in her journey to Westeros. She had done what she thought was right, only to find that the corruption went deeper than she had time to figure out. She had to leave each time, leave the cities crumbling and vulnerable. The slaves she freed had only tasted freedom before being plunged back into poverty and war. Westeros would be different, because she would have the time. She would stay.

Why do you want to be queen?

“I don’t know that I do want to be queen,” she said. She thought of the house with the red door again. That had always been what she thought she wanted. Home. Somewhere safe. The Red Keep. The place where her family was in power. It had to be that. That was the only place, and she was the only person to rule it. “It isn’t about what I want. It’s about what I can do to change things.”

Tyrion nodded. He looked unconvinced. Dany found that she couldn’t blame him. What was she really doing to change things, anyway? What was she changing? What would she change by putting a Targaryen back on the throne? Breaking the wheel shouldn’t mean putting the old powers back in power, should it? Meereen taught her that, among other things.

“You need to win the war,” Tyrion said. “You need to take the kingdom back. You can’t do that without collateral damage, as sorry as I am to say it. But when it’s over, you can make the kingdom over again into what you want. But you need power to do that. It isn’t as simple as winning the war and then changing everything at once. Not if you don’t want to be a tyrant, and I know you don’t. You need to take things slow enough that people will support you. If you lose everyone at once with different changes, there will be no one.”

Like Meereen, she thought again. She frowned down at the map on the table. Would she ever be free of Meereen? But that was an unfair thought. The people who still had to live there were certainly not free of the things she had tried to do. Why should she be allowed to escape it?

“You’re right,” she said. “And we will address that once I reach that point. But your sister still wears her crown, and Robb Stark still stays in my castle, thinking me an absurd, trussed-up little girl on a foolishly large throne.” She huffed a laugh and found her eyes lingering on a wolf figurine on the table. Someone had left it knocked over at The Twins. Dany took it and set it upright again, back in Winterfell, where it belonged.

Stark’s voice had been strong and broken at once as he spoke about his dead mother and his dead wife and his dead child. He had not wavered, and he did not burn the way she always felt when she was angry. His anger didn’t simmer inside him and grow ever outward. It chilled him and steadied him and gave him purpose. His family had been slaughtered because of the Lannisters and their allies, and he spoke of it with a pain that she felt in her own chest. He and Dany had both suffered much. Dany had lost her own husband, and her own child. She had been driven from her home, and she had found her way back. There were common threads there that she just had to seize.

She was a queen. She was all of the titles she had earned on her journey. But she had been more than that, once. She used to think it was less. That frightened little girl who lived in Illyrio’s manse and who thought she understood the cruelties of the world. A young girl frightened and unsure how to survive when she was forced into a marriage she didn’t want. She had banished that young girl as best as she could. If I look back, I am lost. But looking back didn’t mean lingering. It didn’t mean becoming that little girl again. It only meant that that little girl could remind her of what it was like to want simple things. Simple happiness.

“Lord Stark’s Hand,” she said. “He was a simple spoken man.”

“His name is Davos Seaworth, your grace. I believe he was a smuggler. He also served as Hand to Stannis Baratheon, who raised him to a Lord some years ago.”

“Did he? I’d like you to talk with him tomorrow. Keep him distracted. I want to talk to Lord Stark alone. I think he will better receive me if we are both unguarded.”

“Unguarded, your grace?” Tyrion asked uncomfortably. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“Grey Worm will be at the door. And the woman who came in with Lord Stark. I assume she’s the guard you spoke of. The one who knows your brother.”

“Lady Brienne, yes.”

“She can stay at the door as well. But we should talk alone. I would have Lord Stark understand that I am not my father, and I’m not Cersei.”

“As you say, your grace,” Tyrion said. He bowed and left the room. He looked uncomfortable, perhaps that his idea had so blatantly failed, or perhaps that she was moving on with her own. It was difficult to say. She was glad to be rid of him, in any case. She had no energy to soothe his ego; though she was no longer blindly angry, she still was annoyed that she had allowed him to make her make such a misstep.

Tomorrow would be different. She would fix this.

Chapter Text

Bran returning to them was as unexpected as it was welcome, but the welcome feeling didn’t last.

Alone in her rooms, Sansa had to take off her cloak. She felt overheated, and there was a tightness in her chest like the panic that used to come over her whenever she heard the latch on her door when Ramsay was still alive.

You looked so beautiful.

Bran’s words had been bland, delivered with a deadened expression and a barely-there smile that made everything worse, somehow. Thinking about it, even hours later, she felt her throat clog with tears.

As a boy, Bran would never have said something so cruel. If he had somehow seen her on her wedding night to that monster, he would have crawled into her lap and hugged her. He would have cried, because he was always so sensitive, though he tried to pretend he wasn’t. This new Bran…

Arya hadn’t expressed any of her distress, but Sansa had been able to read it in the things Arya didn’t show. Arya and Bran had always been close as children, being so near each other in age. They had been like Robb and Jon, or perhaps like Sansa and Robb when they were young enough to play together without the separation that came as they grew.

Bran and Arya together had been like feral creatures. They had shared this insatiable appetite for mischief, and it was painful to remember the excitement on Arya’s face in the courtyard fading into bewilderment as it became clear that Bran was no longer Bran.

Jon’s face had been stony, too, and he had remained uncommonly quiet, even for him. None of them knew how to talk to this creature that had returned to them wearing Bran's face and reciting Bran's memories. Sansa had tried, her courtesies providing a kind of armor as they always did when she didn’t know what to say. And that was when Bran had said it. Alluded to her wedding. Told her how beautiful she had been on the night she married that fucking monster. And the worst part was that Bran didn’t even seem to notice.

If he did notice, he certainly didn’t care.

It was not enough to remove her cloak. Still she felt overheated, and her skin still felt too tight, and she still felt afraid. Trapped. She crossed to the window and flung it open, letting in the chill. Tormund was in the yard with Arya. Bran was likely still with Jon in the godswood, and Sansa hated that she felt relief not to see him. Arya was demonstrating a move to Tormund that she must have just used on him in sparring, because he was covered in snow all down his left side. Small and lithe, Sansa’s sister danced around the Wildling man while he did all he could to keep up with her and block her. He wasn’t loud and blustering or quieter and mocking, but watching her carefully, learning her footwork. He had surprised Sansa and Jon both by taking his duties seriously after Jon assigned him to train the undisciplined Free Folk forces to prepare them for the wars to come.

It was calming to watch them. It was slower than a true fight, slightly faster than a dance. It helped to see how capable Arya was. To see her showing off her skills with so much confidence. She can protect herself, Sansa thought with relief. That’s one less thing to worry about. Tormund didn’t seem to mind at all to be so soundly trounced by a girl, and he laughed the kind of full laugh that meant throwing back his head. He said something admiring that Sansa couldn’t hear, but it made Arya’s eyes light up. Tormund called for someone, and a small girl ran up eagerly from where she had been watching. Arya grinned, and she produced a wooden sword from a rack off to the side. She beckoned the girl closer.

There. That had done it. Sansa sagged in relief against the stone. This wasn’t the Winterfell of Ramsay Bolton. She wasn’t Sansa Bolton. She was Sansa Stark. She was free of any husband. She was surrounded by people who loved her and who would do anything to keep her safe. She didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Her face was cooling. Her heart was slowing. Her dress no longer felt like it was strangling her.

She watched a little longer, though she didn’t need it like she had when she first entered the room. She thought of Arya when she was younger, always begging for a sword or for a chance to learn, at least, to use one. She saw how happy that little girl looked, watching a girl as slight as Arya handily beat a big man like Tormund despite her little knife and littler form. Tormund was roaring with laughter, slapping Arya on the back with a brotherly camaraderie that made Arya’s face split into a childlike grin. Sansa closed her eyes and breathed in the cold air. It smelled like it would snow soon, and she was back in Winterfell with most of her family. She didn’t have to be afraid.

Well. There were some things to be afraid of.

Her latest response to Jaime Lannister was drying on the desk, and it reminded her. His warning about Littlefinger hadn’t been necessary, but the fact that he thought she had needed it…

Only an idiot would trust Littlefinger. She said that to Jon once, and it remained true. Littlefinger was not someone who could be trusted, and yet he was still in their home, wandering their halls. He was the only thing left in Winterfell to be feared. The dead were coming, but Littlefinger was here, and she knew how much damage he could do if he was given enough time in which to do it. He had to be removed somehow, and he had to be placated until then. She had been so sure that she could handle him, but there were days when she thought she would never be able to handle Lord Baelish.

She picked up her cloak from where she had tossed it on the bed. If Bran could help them with anything, hopefully it would be this.

By the time she reached Bran and Jon in the godswood, her mask was back in place, but Bran looked at her as if he could see right through it.

“I didn’t intend to upset you,” he said. Jon looked pained. He was hunched in his cloak, though he didn’t often complain about the cold. The temperature was dropping quickly, and the wind bit at Sansa’s exposed skin the more the sun set.

Sansa liked the cold. She liked the chill on her face. It kept her exactly where she was. There was no danger slipping away.

“I know you didn’t,” she said. She could almost hear Arya’s voice: that’s a lie. Arya had been annoying before, but at least she hadn’t been able to tell when Sansa wasn’t telling the truth. Sansa did so much lying these days. It had been frustrating to realize that there was someone she couldn’t lie to. Arya sounded amused, at this point, when she made the accusations. As if to say: really? You haven’t learned by now that that doesn’t work with me?

She was softer, Arya. Sansa had thought her harder at first, but that wasn’t it at all. She was softer than she had been. She would look at Sansa, and Sansa would know that she was truly seen. Arya understood Sansa in ways she never had before. She wasn’t as angry. Not in the way where she struggled against everything, never quite seeming to fit. She was more at peace with herself than she used to be.

Sansa was the one who was harder than she had been. Sansa was the one who was struggling with herself, fighting against herself, desperately trying to be something else. Could Bran see that, too? Could he see that as easily as he had seen her at her wedding?

“I forget sometimes,” Bran said, though he didn’t explain what it was that he forgot. He looked at the tree. “Jon asked me about the Night King.”

Sansa felt some fondness for Jon, untouched by all the things about Jon that confused and confounded her. She smiled over at him, and her smile grew when he looked embarrassed.

“Yes, of course he did,” she said. She sat beside him in the snow, folding her cloak under herself. Jon looked pained again, but he didn’t say anything. She looked up at Bran in his wheeled chair. “What did you say?”

“He’s right. The Night King is coming. He’ll have the means to break through the Wall soon.”

“Is there any way to stop him?” Sansa asked.

“No,” Bran said. “This was always inevitable.”

“Is there a chance of you ever speaking fucking plainly?” asked Arya, melting out of the fog. She arched an eyebrow at Sansa that was probably meant as a greeting, but it made Sansa realize how close she sat to Jon, and how it must look to Arya, who knew. She stood again, and Arya watched her. She brushed the snow off her cloak and moved away, jittery, her hands clasped together to keep them from giving her away further.

“I am speaking plainly,” Bran said. “It’s everything else that isn’t plain.”

“Seven hells,” Arya muttered.

“What should be we doing?” Sansa asked. “Surely there’s something. What would you advise?”

“The pieces will fall into place on their own,” Bran said. Arya rolled her eyes and groaned aloud. Bran ignored her. “It should happen here. At Winterfell. This is where his power will be weakest.”

“What? Why?” Arya asked.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“These seem like some shite magic powers, actually,” Arya said. “I think I’d rather have my brother back.”

Bran didn’t feel the need to respond to that. He just looked at Sansa.

“I can help you with something,” he said. “Littlefinger. You were right not to trust him. But you don’t know the whole of his plans, yet. I can tell you.”

“Yes,” Jon said, eager, leaning closer, eager to be able to stop at least one bad thing before it had a chance to happen. “Can you?”

“His aims are rather straightforward,” Bran said, as if bored by Littlefinger’s attempts at subterfuge. Sansa felt a thrill of something in her to hear it. She was so used to thinking of Littlefinger as powerful. Almost omniscient. She loved to hear him dismissed so easily by her brother. “He is a simpler man than he thinks. He has pulled the strings of everything that has happened to us.”

“Yes,” Sansa agreed.

“Far more than you know,” Bran cautioned.

After a long conversation about Littlefinger between the four of them, and then a devastating private conversation between just she and Bran, Sansa saw Bran settled in his new rooms, and then she returned to her own. Jon was waiting.

“Arya’s keeping an eye on him,” he said. Sansa knew he meant Littlefinger, and she nodded. She felt wrong. Hollow. Exhausted. She hated him, she realized. Not Jon. Littlefinger. She hated him more than just for what he had done to her. She hated him for what he was. She hated him for trying to claim what wasn’t his. She hated him for his pettiness and his cruelty and his ability to make the world a worse place just by trying to seize a foothold in it.

“I knew he was a monster,” she said. “But I didn’t know how much. Bran…the things he said…”

“I know,” Jon said. He sounded so tired. She felt tired, too.

“I want him dead,” she said. It was a revelation. She hadn’t expected it. Once she had spoken it, it was sparkling in the room between them. She turned and looked at him. Jon was watching her. She couldn’t tell how he felt. She could feel the rage swelling in her chest. She thought of her mother. Her father. Trusting Littlefinger. Aunt Lysa, loving him. How many people had he hurt with his lies? How many people were dead because he wanted chaos? “For everything he did to us. To stop him from doing it anymore, or to anyone else. I hardly know. I just want him dead.”

“I’ll kill him,” Jon said. It was spoken sincerely. Not angrily. Not with any particular passion. It was very quiet and intense, and he didn’t look away from her eyes.

“Jon,” she said.

“I would. Do you know that? I would kill him if you asked. I meant it when I said I would protect you. You can’t feel safe as long as he’s here. I know you wanted to try and deal with him another way, but there isn’t another way.”

Her breathing was coming harder, like it did during her panics, but she wasn’t panicked now. She felt instead light, overwhelmed by it. He would do it. If she asked for Littlefinger’s head, he would bring it to her.

Is this what Cersei felt?

Bran was the one who told her. He wanted to speak to her alone, and she had been so afraid. She hadn’t wanted to hear anything else. Even Bran’s apologies might dredge up some memories she didn’t want. But she had nodded and stayed behind, and Bran told her what happened to him.

What he had seen. What Jaime Lannister had done. What Cersei had said.

“I thought you fell,” she said. “Bran. I thought. I’m so. I won’t write to him anymore. I promise. I thought…”

“That’s not why I’m telling you,” Bran had replied. “I’m telling you so you understand him better.”

“Understand him? He pushed you from a tower. He meant to kill you.”

“Yes, but he didn’t. And if he hadn’t done what he did, we might all be lost. I might not have become the Three Eyed Raven. I know you might prefer that, but I need to be as I am if we are going to win against the Night King.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s evil. I won’t…”

“You will. And you must. What do you think would have happened? If I had climbed down the tower and told everyone what I had seen?”

“What?” Sansa had asked. She couldn’t get the image out of her head. Jaime Lannister grabbing Bran’s shirt. Tossing him backward. She couldn’t believe she had started to like him. To count him as a friend. All along he had been playing her for a fool. Maybe she was one. Had Cersei been involved after all? Had the twins laughed together over her silly little letters?

“If I went to the king. If I said ‘I saw your queen in the arms of her brother in the Broken Tower’, what do you think he would have done? Do you think he would have allowed them to live? Do you think he would have allowed the children to live?”

Sansa couldn’t understand. It was as if he was speaking an entirely different language.

“Are you defending him?”

“I’m explaining him. I have seen him. I saw him kill the Mad King. I saw how afraid he was. Aerys was going to burn the city. Aerys was going to kill everyone, and only Jaime Lannister was there to stop him. I saw how his hands shook afterward, and how they called him Kingslayer without ever knowing that he had saved them all. I saw the way he pretended, after. Learned to pretend. Just like you pretend now.”

Sansa’s own hands had been shaking. She clutched them tight.

“Bran,” she had said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that this happened to you. You shouldn’t have to carry all of this.”

“People are easier to understand when you have seen them at their worst and when you have seen them at their best. I know why you told Cersei about father’s plans. I understand that, too. You were just a girl. You didn’t know.”

Sansa had closed her eyes, then.

“Please. Please stop.”

“I know why Cersei wanted me dead. I know that she was afraid for her children. I know why she blew up the sept. Understanding doesn’t always mean forgiving. But I forgive him. I forgive both of them. Just as I have forgiven all of you. These things can’t matter anymore. We were different people then, and we need to be better now.”

“I will never forgive Cersei for what she did to me,” Sansa had said, and Bran had only smiled.

“No. You won’t. But you will understand her.”

Was this what he meant? Was this what Cersei had been feeling when she told Jaime that something needed to be done about Bran and Jaime had chosen to push him out the window? To be faced with a problem, whatever that problem was, and to know that Jaime would handle it? Jon would kill Littlefinger for her. All she had to do was ask. It wouldn’t matter about the consequences. It wouldn’t matter that they would lose half their army if the lords of the Vale chose to respond to the murder. Jon would do it anyway.

Sansa stepped closer, and Jon gently took her upper arms in his hands. His thumbs rubbed circles into her cloak, and the skin beneath her layers tingled. Old scars come to life. Did Cersei ever cling to Jaime when she was afraid? Did Cersei feel these shivers of wanting to be closer?

Understanding doesn’t mean forgiving. She had needed to hear that. She understood Cersei too well sometimes, but that didn’t mean she had to be like her. She forced herself to step back from Jon and pace across the room to her desk. She wanted to feel sickened, but she wasn’t. She felt safe.

“I wish it was that simple,” she said. “And I know you would do anything you had to to make sure we’re safe.”

“I would,” Jon promised. He still stood where she left him. She wished she could better read his expression.

“I know. But we need to be smart about it. You can’t protect me from everything.”

Jon seemed surprised by that. He smiled a little when he saw that she was smiling too.

“I know,” he admitted. “That doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

Sansa nodded. She looked towards the drawer where her unfinished letter to Jaime Lannister was hidden. She didn’t see how she was supposed to finish it now. She crumpled it up and carried it to the fire. She thrust it in before she could second-guess herself. She should not have felt anything but vindicated. She should not have felt a glimmer of pain, like she was losing something good.

“We need to trust Arya to handle it,” she said. She knew Jon wouldn’t like to hear that. He had been livid when Arya first suggested being the one to take care of the threat. Before he could argue again now, she said, “this is what she trained for.”

“So she said,” Jon muttered. He watched the letter burn, and she wondered what he thought it was. She hadn’t told him about her letters to Jaime, and Bran had made her swear not to tell him about what Jaime had done. The man who pushed me died when he lost his hand, he said. Sansa didn’t know if that was true. Too many things had happened today. She felt…

“I don’t like it either,” she said, cutting off her own train of thought. “I wish we could protect her. But we can’t treat her like a little sister forever. If she can do what she says she can…”

“I know,” Jon admitted. He sank into a chair by the fireplace. They used to sit together almost every night, but it had been different since Robb's return. Sansa used to sew, and Jon would watch, or read, or write whatever correspondence he needed to write. They were simpler. Warmer, too.

And still she had wanted.

“So many enemies,” Sansa said. She sat beside him. The letter to Jaime was ash, now.

The man who pushed me died when he lost his hand. He is no longer that same man. And there will be more death to come. You will forgive him, or you will mourn him. There are no other options.

“But we’re together,” Jon said. It was rare for him to sound hopeful, but he did, now. He looked warm in his cloak, in the firelight. He was almost smiling at her. “We’re home. And if Bran is right, we have a chance.”

Sansa smiled back.

“You’re right,” she said, and she allowed herself one brief touch. She covered his gloved hand with her own, and she squeezed. She should be happier with what she had instead of being so dissatisfied with what she didn’t.

Chapter Text

Robb was amused when the pretty woman from the day before—who finally had a chance to introduce herself as Missandei when she wasn’t busy rattling off her queen’s various honorifics—came to their assigned rooms and announced that he had been invited to a private audience with the “rightful queen of the seven kingdoms”.

“Not a great start,” he remarked aside to Brienne once Missandei left to wait in the hall for them.

“She left off the other titles,” Brienne pointed out. It was still an effort not to call him your grace, but he had requested that she not, and so she didn’t. She was gratified when he laughed. He was her king, and she was sworn to his family. She could not quite forget that. But their journey to Dragonstone had allowed them to forge a connection that was comfortable to her. There were still too many moments when she felt uncomfortable with Lady Sansa, in the sense that neither of them understood how to talk to each other. They both shared the same affinity for stories and songs, and they could talk at length about old tales and about their own pasts. But Brienne had never felt comfortable around women like Sansa. She had tried for so long to be like them, to emulate them, to be a woman like her septa wished for her to be. She had failed at every turn to master the things at which Sansa so excelled. Sansa could embroider and hold a conversation without fumbling with either of those things. She had a knack for dressing herself and always looked stunning no matter what she chose to wear. She was constantly making clothing for people, as if it was an easy thing to do. As if she was handing out small trinkets like the ones Brienne’s father used to buy at the markets, except these were beautiful garments that Sansa had spent hours making. She was always surprising Brienne with new tunics or breeches or cloaks. Or, if not new, then repaired when Brienne didn’t even think to ask.

Those were the kinds of things that the ladies of great houses didn’t do for themselves, Brienne didn’t think, but Sansa claimed to find it soothing. Brienne could never understand that. Her own fingers were too big and too bulky to be of any use when making delicate things, and she had always despaired of it. She could field stitch wounds, and she could repair simple tears. Her clothing was easy enough, but the patches were obvious, and they were never pretty.

Sansa, too, was always thinking. Like her lady mother had, Sansa was always planning for the worst outcomes, so as to never be surprised. She was always asking questions about the way things were run. Brienne was used to feeling like a blunt instrument, not a delicate one, and she always felt simple when Sansa would display curiosity about how something was baked or sewed or made from wood. It was all to help rebuild her family home, Brienne knew, and not for idle curiosity, but it still surprised her, sometimes, hearing Sansa ask about things that Brienne never would.

Robb was simpler. Robb had his sister’s mind and his mother’s sharpness, but he shared Brienne’s blunt approach to things, and Brienne knew fighting. Sparring. She liked to teach Robb, help him strengthen his arm and get back into his fighting form, which had evaded him since he was injured at the Red Wedding. That was a way that Brienne could be of use, and she could be of use when she made him laugh, as well. They had similarly dry senses of humor, and she knew that he would not judge her for her inadequacies, like her habit of falling in love with beautiful, unreachable men like Renly and Jaime. He had fallen in love foolishly, too, after all. The existence of Brienne’s affections for Jaime felt settled between she and Robb in a way they still didn’t quite feel between she and Sansa.

She followed Robb to the airy room where the meeting was to happen. Dragonstone was a cold and unwelcoming place, but Daenerys and her people had made this room as pleasant as possible. They had hung gauzy curtains to bracket the doors that led to the balcony. Every bit of seating was covered in something soft, and there were wall hangings with beautiful designs that hid the drab stone beneath. Robb didn’t bother to hide his interest or his admiration.

Everything about the dragon queen’s court was so new to Brienne. Tarth had its fair share of visitors from across the Narrow Sea, so Brienne had seen ships and their crews and always liked to look at the people who arrived from other lands, their clothing and weapons and languages were always so different. Their wares, too, that they sold down by the docks. The pieces of jewelry and the beautiful scarves and the dresses that left the wearers almost bare. Brienne would stare and touch and want, and sometimes her father would buy her little gifts of things. Handkerchiefs and small stone or wood carvings, painted to look like animals that only existed across the sea. Jewelry worked into beautiful patterns that she had never seen. The court of the dragon queen was like that on a much bigger scale. The people. The languages. The art and the wardrobe and the elaborate hairstyles. All of it was so new and exciting. Brienne hid her reactions to every new thing with a blank look, as she hid everything, but Robb was less subtle.

Daenerys did not leave them alone in the room for long, which spoke well of her, Brienne thought. It would have been an obvious attempt at a power play if she had made them wait. The dragon queen was dressed in softer clothing than she had been the day before, too, and she had her hair only half braided so that the rest of it fell about her shoulders in gentle waves of white. Brienne had to wonder if it was something that Tyrion advised or if it was something that she had chosen for herself. Perhaps a knack for dressing towards the impression she wanted to give off was a skill that Daenerys and Sansa shared. Brienne had noticed the differences in the way Sansa dressed herself for different audiences, though she hadn’t developed the language to describe what each look meant. She knew that some choices were for Sansa’s own armor, and some were for the way she wanted to look. Vulnerable or strong or determined or needful. A language to speak to the men around her without saying any words.

“I hope your quarters are to your tastes,” Daenerys said, including both Robb and Brienne in her address.

“They’re quite comfortable,” Robb said. Brienne bowed her head, too nervous to speak.

“I thought our guards might stand outside the door, but Grey Worm disagreed,” Daenerys said, indicating the man in the Unsullied garb who stood just inside the door. “He agreed to himself and Lady Brienne remaining by the door inside.”

“I’m sure Lady Brienne will accept that as well,” Robb said. He looked at her for confirmation, his eyes sparkling with amusement at the formality of the address, and she nodded again, feeling a fool for her silence but not wanting to speak and make it worse. She joined Grey Worm by the door. He was much smaller than her, but she wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking him less powerful. She saw him eyeing her the same way she eyed him. To her surprise, he smiled slightly, amused by their study of each other. She allowed a tiny lift of her lips as well before she stood with her back to the door, watching the audience in the room beyond.

Brienne was used to watching intimate conversations that would have been better had without audiences. She had been used to it in Renly’s camp, watching his war councils, standing guard while he talked to Margaery Tyrell, listening to his conversation with Catelyn Stark. She was used to it with Lady Sansa, watching her early, stilted conversations with Jon or her tense exchanges with Lord Baelish. It felt entirely strange to be witness to this meeting between the king and queen, however. They were two strangers meeting on an attempted level ground, both of them wary and afraid of saying too much. They were two leaders, but to Brienne they looked like children. Fumbling for an accord that their much older advisors wanted. Robb was a king, and Daenerys had her many titles even if she wasn’t quite queen of Westeros yet, and Brienne knew that infantilizing them was disrespectful at best. She couldn’t help it. They both seemed too young for the responsibility of this alliance to fall on their shoulders.

Daenerys was too polite as she asked about his journey. Robb was too stiff as he inquired about hers. They stood by the balcony and attempted to converse in a less formal manner, but of course it couldn’t happen when they were both too wary.

Then, something happened. A shift in the air. Daenerys made a comment about her brother.

“The way he described it,” she said, looking around the room in poorly concealed disappointment. “Maybe it was because I was a child, but I expected it to be…a bit nicer.” Her expression twisted into an almost apologetic smile, and Robb almost laughed. A small huff of amusement. A wry lift of one corner of his mouth.

He replied with a story about Sansa from when they were young, and how she would always describe everything as being much more romantic and grand than it was in reality. Daenerys laughed at the story, and it made Robb smile at her. She asked about his siblings. Robb described them. They moved from the balcony and sat at a small table. Daenerys offered him wine.

If it was a performance on either one of their parts, it was a good one. Awkward stiltedness giving way to a quiet kind of relief on both sides. It reminded Brienne of when she had first met Lady Sansa. The lessening tension of discovering that they did have things they could talk about, even if they were so different on the outside.

“That was the last thing I saw,” Robb said quietly, some time later. Daenerys was gazing at him curiously, as if she still wasn’t sure what to make of him. “My mother doing whatever she could to try and bargain for my life. It wasn’t enough. I would have died if the Freys hadn’t been so consumed with their victory that they forgot to check the bodies. My mother’s uncle was able to smuggle me out, and I healed at the castle of my father’s friend. People like to tell me that I was lucky.”

He smiled at her a little bitterly, and Daenerys returned the gesture.

“Yes,” she said, like someone who knew what it was like to be lucky to survive with a bitter aftertaste. “I’m sure they do. It sounds like your mother was a fierce woman. I would have liked to have known her.”

“She was protective of her children,” Robb answered. “She would have done anything for us. She did do anything.”

“I never knew my mother. I wish I had. I imagine she must have been like that as well. My own son…” Daenerys frowned out at the ocean that surrounded Dragonstone. “My son was lost before he was born. But I imagine that I would have been a fierce mother.”

“Undoubtedly,” Robb said. He managed to make it sound like more than mere courtesy, like it was something he truly believed, and it made Daenerys smile. It was encouraging, Brienne thought, though she knew little enough about the politics of this. It was already better than everything that had happened the previous day. Davos would be pleased.

“Your wife,” Daenerys said. “Tyrion tells me that she wasn’t from one of your great houses.”

“No. Talisa was from Volantis,” Robb answered. “I met her when she was healing a man on the battlefield.” He smiled slightly, and Daenerys smiled back reflexively. Another good sign. “I had never met another woman like her before. I was smitten immediately.”

“You loved her before you married her, then. Love found me in my marriage, but I didn’t love him at first.”

“My parents weren’t a love match,” Robb said. “My mother said they fell in love gradually. They had to build it.”

Daenerys nodded at Robb’s questioning look.

“Gradually, yes,” she said wistfully. “I was so afraid at first. My brother had sold me into the marriage to win the crown, and I knew nothing about the Dothraki or their customs except the terrible things I had been told. I didn’t even speak the language. My husband seemed brutish and cruel to me. It was only as the days passed and we learned to communicate that I began to feel something else for him.” She leaned one elbow on the table, closer, her eyes wide with empathy. “I think that what happened to us yesterday wasn’t dissimilar. It was a failure of communication.”

Brienne had to look down at the floor at that, to hide her smile. Daenerys was in many ways like Sansa in that moment. She was sharp and smart and didn’t allow herself to forget what she was truly here for. Brienne admired it. It was clear that Robb did too, for the way he smiled at her. Amused and only slightly strained, to show her that he knew what she was doing.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “It’s easier to talk like this. But I still can’t say whether you’re the right person to lead Westeros. I know little enough about what you’ve done, and where you’ve come from, and I know that any answers I get are through the lens of the victor. I will need time to see if you are a queen worthy of bending the knee to.”

“Your ancestor bent the knee to mine before,” Daenerys pointed out.

“Yes, and my grandfather and my uncle were killed by your father,” Robb said. He didn’t back down. Brienne was proud of how strong he seemed, even as he seemed kind. “Neither of us are our ancestors, your grace. Our wars are not their wars. Our deeds are not their deeds. My ancestor’s choices will have no bearing on mine.”

“No,” Daenerys agreed. She stood and walked to the balcony door. One of the dragons flew by it, off a ways, over the waves. Brienne watched it and tried to pretend that she wasn’t. Daenerys turned back to look at Robb, and Brienne could see that she was troubled. Frustrated, perhaps, that Robb wasn’t proving as easy as she thought he was going to be. Or troubled by something else, something deeper within. “I do not intend to rule by fear.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Robb said.

“My advisors want me to show strength. Some of my people advise mercy. But I cannot afford to look weak.”

Robb’s posture straightened slightly, but he still looked slumped to Brienne’s eyes. Slumped and exhausted. Tired of fighting. Tired of leaving home for wars he didn’t want to fight.

“What is it that you think will make you look weak?” Robb asked. “The north has declared their independence. They do not consider themselves a part of the seven kingdoms any longer. We rebelled against a corrupt king. As I said yesterday, we rose in part because of the betrayal of my house. I nearly died for it. My wife and my mother did. My child. All dead. My people suffered because of my mistakes, and yet they chose me to lead them yet again. You aren’t the only one who can’t afford to look weak.”

“It is the largest part of my kingdom,” Daenerys pointed out. Her tone was cool, though not yet hard. Robb’s tone was cool, too.

“It is the largest part of Cersei Lannister’s kingdom,” he replied. He rose to his feet and joined her at the door to the balcony. They both looked beautiful there, with the sunlight streaming in. “I came to meet you because I knew that I was fortunate to receive a first invitation, and because I knew that the second one would be a threat. I came to make sure that Tyrion Lannister would not try to lay claim to my sister’s hand, and I came to see you for myself, because I needed to understand. But I also came because I want to believe in you. I want to help you. Not as a lord of one of your kingdoms. Not as a man who has bent the knee to you. I want to help you because Cersei Lannister is not the ruler that Westeros needs. I believe that she needs to be removed from power. I will gladly join my forces to yours.”

“Without bending the knee,” she said.

“Without bending the knee,” Robb confirmed. “My people just put the crown back on my head. If I take it off again so quickly, it will be a betrayal of their choice.”

Daenerys nodded. This time she was the one who showed she understood the power play with a quirk of the lips, but she didn’t seem angry.

“It’s a starting point,” she said. “For our discussions.”

Robb nodded, and he glanced at Brienne. She hardly understood for what, and then he let out a short, sharp breath, and she realized that it had been for strength.

“There’s something else,” he said. He gestured for Daenerys to sit again, and she did, glancing briefly toward the door to make sure that Grey Worm still stood watch. Brienne glanced at her fellow guard again to find him watching her already. He looked thoughtful, this time, and she knew that he was measuring her up, trying to imagine how he would fight her. “You know of the Wall in the north?”

“Yes, of course,” Daenerys said.

“It’s difficult to explain, and I don’t know how to explain it in a way that will make you believe me. I hardly know what to believe myself, except that I trust the man who told me this. There is something coming from beyond the Wall. The dead have been rising. Corpses reanimated and compelled to fight against the living. The people from beyond the Wall, the Free Folk, ran from them. They raised an army and tried to cross over into our lands. They were let through by the Lord Commander of the Nights Watch, and most of them have joined their forces to mine. We have been preparing since I returned to my home, but we know we cannot win alone.”

“The dead?” Daenerys asked. Brienne couldn’t blame her for the incredulity in her voice, nor the concern in her expression.

“The dead,” Robb agreed with a weary sigh. “Another Long Night.”

Daenerys frowned in the direction of the door, as if she wanted to escape, or perhaps as if she wanted to ask for a second opinion, but eventually she turned back to Robb.

“I don’t know what to say to that,” she admitted. Robb laughed. It seemed to surprise Daenerys, and she smiled at him disbelievingly.

“I didn’t either,” he said. “But the man who told me, my cousin…he served as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, until he was killed and brought back to life by the magic of a Red Priestess from Asshai. Among all the other news he was telling me when we reunited, the army of the dead seemed almost believable.” Daenerys did laugh, then, and Robb shook his head. “I would have thought it madness myself. I almost did. When he started telling me, I kept looking at my sister, seeing if she would break first. She was always the worst at keeping a prank going when we were children. She would always start to giggle and give it away. But she didn’t. That’s when I knew. And Jon…Jon wouldn’t lie to me.” He sobered suddenly. “Jon wouldn’t lie to anyone. Not about something like that. And that brings me to…the other thing.”

Brienne found herself half a heartbeat from taking a step forward. What was he thinking? But he was the king, and if he thought Daenerys needed to hear, then it was his place. Still. She ached with a want to stop him. They hadn’t discussed this.

“You sound quite grim,” Daenerys said when it took some time for Robb to begin. He huffed out a laugh. Daenerys waited. Finally, Robb met her eyes. He looked very sincere like that, and it would have been a good play, except that Brienne was sure he wasn’t playing. It was just Robb. Kind, earnest Robb.

“Until recently, I believed my cousin Jon Snow to be my half-brother. My father’s natural son. My father had a reputation for honor, but he had betrayed my mother and fathered a son on some other woman when he was fighting in Robert’s Rebellion. He brought the babe back to be raised in our household, too. My mother forgave him eventually, but even after she did, Jon was a sore spot with her. She always distrusted him, but I think she was just…angry, still. It was misplaced anger. She couldn’t be angry with my father. She loved my father. But she could be angry with Jon. We never listened to her, growing up. Most of my siblings, anyway. Jon was always one of us. But when I was healing, recovering from my wounds at the wedding, my father’s friend told me that Jon wasn’t my father’s son at all. He’s the son of my father’s sister, Lyanna Stark.” Daenerys’s eyes were fierce on his. She understood immediately. Robb continued anyway. “And your brother. Rhaegar.”

“You’re certain?” Daenerys asked.

“Yes,” Robb replied. Daenerys blinked rapidly, and Brienne wondered if she was blinking back tears. That was always how she tried to avoid them.

“Rhaegar had a son,” Daenerys said quietly. “I am not the only one left.”

“No,” Robb said. His smile was quiet and pleased. He had been nervous that telling her would be a mistake. Brienne could see that now. “My father knew that Robert would harm Jon, if he knew. Robert was bent on taking revenge on Rhaegar by wiping out his family, and my father knew that would mean Rhaegar’s son, even if the babe was also Lyanna’s. So he broke my mother’s heart to keep his sister’s secret, and he raised Jon without anyone ever knowing. His reputation suffered. His marriage suffered. But he would have done anything to protect Jon. And Jon is one of the best men I know. He has my father’s honor, and he is a devilish fighter, and he’s braver than anyone I’ve ever met. I…I wanted you to know. It may not make us allies yet. It may not make us trust each other. But you are family, in a way. Jon will always be my brother.”

He was looking at Daenerys with such an open expression, and Daenerys nodded. She almost reached for his hand on the table between them, but she thought better of it. She stood again, and she gave him a slightly watery smile.

“This was a good start,” she said. “I would like some time alone to…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, trailing off, but Robb nodded anyway. He bowed, and when Daenerys offered her hand, he kissed it. She seemed surprised, but she didn’t take her hand away, and she smiled at him afterward.

When they were again out in the hall, Grey Worm offered to show them back to the guest quarters. As they were walking, Robb arched his eyebrows at Brienne in question, and she lifted one shoulder. It had gone passably well. Robb stifled a laugh, and he made a face that showed his agreement.

At the entrance to the guest quarters, after Robb had already entered, Grey Worm stopped her with a gesture, and she turned to look at him.

“I would like to fight you,” he said. “There is a training yard.”

“Oh,” Brienne said.

“Please, Brienne,” Robb replied, and his expression was young and mirthful again. “I need to see that.”

“Well, all right,” Brienne allowed. “Lead the way, I suppose.”

Grey Worm smiled again, and bowed, and led.

Chapter Text

Jaime had spoken often, and at humiliating length, about the Maid of Tarth and her fighting prowess. Tyrion hadn’t been particularly interested in hearing about it.

He’d been sure she was a good fighter for a woman—Jaime was the best swordfighter in the seven kingdoms before he lost his hand. He wouldn’t have given such praise to just anybody. But Tyrion found it hard to imagine she was anywhere close to as good as Jaime said.

Jaime was an odd man. In a lot of ways, he was odder than Tyrion, despite what people thought when they looked at the two brothers. Even beyond the whole ‘fucking their sister’ thing, Tyrion had trouble understanding Jaime sometimes. He claimed to hate their family’s schemes and political maneuverings, but he went ahead and involved himself whenever they demanded it of him, aside from their father’s desire to see him married and serving as Lord of Casterly Rock. That, he stayed steadfastly against, and frankly it was Tyrion’s least favorite thing about his brother. The thing that Tyrion desperately wanted for himself but knew he would never get, Jaime cared nothing for. Jaime had been raised for it, was given opportunity after opportunity to take it, and he threw every possibility away for the dubious reward of what lay between their sister’s thighs.

There was also a real oddness to the fact that, aside from Cersei, Jaime never fucked anybody. It was only Cersei. Rare was the man with that kind of loyalty. Even Ned Stark had fathered a bastard. Jaime had fathered three, but he had never once strayed from his lover’s bed.

When Tyrion saw the Maid of Tarth fighting with Grey Worm in the courtyard, surrounded by onlookers, including the grim-faced young man who had become King in the North, Tyrion also saw another way in which his brother was one of the oddest men he’d ever known.

Jaime had not been exaggerating his companion’s skill. Tyrion had of course assumed he must have been. A good fighter…he didn’t doubt it. She was built for fighting. Anyone could see the muscles that she had cultivated. And she was monstrously tall, even beside his tall big brother. But there was so much nuance to fighting. Surely she could not have learned that, as well. Who would have taught her?

But watching her against Grey Worm…

She was remarkably fast for a big woman. And he could tell that she was an intelligent fighter as well by the way she watched her opponent. She didn’t let her guard down. Her eyes tracked his every movement, as his eyes did the same. He was even smiling. Tyrion could never get Grey Worm to smile! He had begun to think it was something that only Missandei could unlock. But no, there was a tiny, satisfied smirk at the corners of his lips. If Grey Worm approved…

King Robb was laughing, and he clapped when Brienne dodged a strike that would have incapacitated a lesser fighter. Tyrion could imagine what Jaime would be saying if he was here.

Then again, maybe he couldn’t. The last time they spoke of her, Jaime had been oddly unsettled. She had been walking in the gardens, pacing restlessly, looking like a caged animal.

“She can’t stay here for much longer,” Jaime had said. He had been wearing his Kingsguard armor at the time. It was the day before Joffrey’s wedding, perhaps two, and Jaime had been wary.

“What do you mean?” Tyrion asked. “I thought you liked having her around to tease and mock. She makes a remarkably easy target.”

“Have you been speaking to her?” Jaime asked. He frowned when Tyrion arched an eyebrow at him.

“Of course I’ve been speaking to her. No one else does, and I of all people know what it’s like to be ugly and ignored.”

Jaime had frowned again, and he had turned to look at Brienne, as if to confirm for himself the truth of Tyrion’s words. Then he shook his head.

“You’re insufferable,” he had said. “Leave Brienne alone. She doesn’t need any of your japes. She’s the reason I’m still here. You should be thanking her. Blowing her kisses each time you pass her on the walk. Father should be showering her in gifts.”

“Marry the girl if you’re so fond of her. Then father will shower her with gifts.”

“I don’t know who would kill me quicker for suggesting it: Brienne or our sister,” Jaime had laughed, though it was a false, tense kind of laugh. He glared down at Tyrion with an attempt as seriousness that looked odd on his so often unserious face. “I mean it, Tyrion. Leave her alone. Your attempts at humor won’t amuse her, and she’s been through enough.”

“Unusual for you to look out so closely for someone not in our family,” Tyrion pointed had out. Jaime frowned, as if he had previously been unaware of that. It was interesting, the way he sometimes seemed like he was almost close to understanding why he was so fucking miserable all the time.

“She protected me,” he said. It was still strangely sincere, for Jaime. “I owe her my life. I mean to repay the favor by keeping her as safe from our family’s claws as I can.”

“And that means me, dear brother?” Tyrion asked. Mocking, but truly a bit hurt. He wasn’t like the rest of their grasping family. He thought Jaime knew that, at least.

“Even you,” Jaime agreed. He laughed a little, bitterly. “Perhaps you most of all.”

He had said no more, and they had never spoken about the Maid of Tarth again. But here she was, and with a Lannister sword in her grasp. Valyrian steel.

Jaime, you fool, Tyrion thought. You should have just married her.

Though it did amuse him to think of their father furious that one of the priceless swords he had been so proud of had been gifted to an oversized ogre of a woman set loose by his favorite child. That she immediately used the steel to protect Sansa Stark of all people only added to the hilarity. What had Jaime been thinking? Surely he wasn’t so stupid he didn’t realize she would still have loyalty to the lady she had sworn to.

The amusement faded as he watched Brienne force Grey Worm to yield. The Unsullied man was grinning up at her, flashing more of a true smile than the challenging smirk had been. Brienne was breathing hard, but she was unbeaten, and she was smiling back down at him. Just like Grey Worm’s, hers was small and unremakable. These warriors were all creatures of restraint except for his brother. Another way in which Jaime was odd, he supposed.

He watched as Brienne helped Grey Worm up, as Robb Stark stood to the side and looked proudly at his bodyguard.

“She cut down three men,” Jaime had said once, giddy with the remembrance, and Tyrion had thought: surely they were not very well-trained men. Perhaps he had been wrong about that, too.

Tyrion was unsettled as he made his way back to the queen’s rooms. He was thinking of Jaime more often, lately. He had known all along that bringing Daenerys to Westeros was going to mean going against his siblings. Jaime had killed her father, and Daenerys did not seem to hate her father nearly as much as Tyrion had hated his. If he couldn’t talk her into understanding Jaime’s reasons, Jaime would die. In the abstract, that was an easy thing to swallow. If Jaime insisted on trying to stop Daenerys, if he insisted on trying to defend Cersei’s tenuous claim to the throne, then of course Jaime would have to be removed. But now that they were here, in Westeros, Tyrion found that he hadn’t prepared nearly enough for the inevitability of a conflict with his brother.

He had dreamed of it the night before, so maybe that was why he couldn’t stop thinking about it today. Or maybe it was just that Stark looked so comfortable out there among the dragon queen’s people. The conversation in the morning had gone well. Yesterday, it had seemed like it would have to be a much more brutal conquering, but now…

The Starks and Daenerys together would make a formidable enemy for his sister. Three dragons would have probably done the job on their own, but there was always a risk. And an alliance with the north might push a few other regions into joining. The Vale, perhaps. Whatever was left of the Riverlands. Whatever was left of anyone, really, after all the wars and betrayals and shifts of power.

If that happened, there was no question. Jaime would burn.

Jaime had burned in the dream. Refusing to bend the knee to a Targaryen ruler, he had stood defiant and unshaken until the flames began to roast him and he began to scream. Tyrion had lain awake after that, breathing heavily, trying to banish the panic and terror. He couldn’t stop smelling it. Hearing his brother’s pain. He couldn’t stop thinking of the little pony Jaime bought him for a nameday gift when he was young, and the way Jaime had smiled when he taught Tyrion to ride it. The wide brightness of his glittering grin. Jaime had always been there when they were children. But it was always Cersei who took him away. Always Cersei he would give preference to. It was too late to change that; Jaime was too loyal a creature to be persuaded to turn his back on their sister now.

Tyrion swallowed the remembrance of his childhood just as fiercely as he swallowed the remembrance of the dream. He hated to feel unsettled before speaking to Daenerys. It was unsettling enough speaking to her without other things on his mind.

When he entered the war room, she was waiting there. She was looking over the map table the way she often did. Her eyes tracing the rivers and climbing the mountain peaks. To someone who had been longing to return to Westeros for so long, Dragonstone must seem hopelessly bare and cold. He wished that he could tell her to get on her dragon and fly. Tour the country. Go see the Stormlands and the Riverlands and the Vale and the North. Fly past the Iron Islands and view the Red Keep, if only from a distance. See what she was fighting for. It would be a foolish risk, so he didn’t. Perhaps he might have if he was still young and foolish. He was trying to be a better Hand this time around. He served a better ruler. It was the least he could do.

“Your grace,” he said in greeting, and Daenerys smiled at him.

“Good morning, Tyrion,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m distracted. I had an…illuminating conversation with the king of the north today.”

The king of the north. Daenerys hadn’t referred to Robb Stark as anything but Lord Stark before. It wasn’t a good sign for their hopes of his bending the knee if she was referring to him as king.

“Are we affording him titles now?” he japed, climbing up into the high-backed chair someone had dragged out of storage for him. It still smelled faintly of damp, but it allowed him to see the top of the table, so he didn’t mind.

“He has agreed to ally with us, though he will not bend the knee yet,” Daenerys said with a small smile. “It’s early days. Negotiation is a war, not a battle. You taught me that.”

“Did I? I deserve praise for that, then. Missandei tells me the conversation went well.”

Daenerys smiled and looked back down at the map again.

“It did,” she said. “I…well. It was a lot to process.”

Tyrion had no idea what she was referring to, but he nodded anyway. Daenerys liked to keep some things to herself. She would tell him when she was ready, or he’d have to prostrate himself before Varys to find out later.

The way things had been going lately, it would probably be the second.

“I was watching Stark and the Maid of Tarth in the courtyard,” he said.

“Yes, as was I. She fought well against Grey Worm. I have seen female fighters in my travels, but none quite as fierce as her.”

“No,” Tyrion agreed. “I thought my brother must have been exaggerating her prowess when we spoke of her, but he wasn’t. She would be a formidable ally to have.”

“Mm,” Daenerys said noncommittally. “Another reason to ally with the Starks, I suppose. That list is getting longer all the time.”

“She could also be loyal to my brother,” Tyrion said. Daenerys sighed. She didn’t like to hear things like this, he knew. The intricacy of politics bored her. That was why he had been such a good choice as her Hand; the intricacy of politics was his favorite part. But Daenerys grew restless here, and political maneuverings didn’t feel like action to her the way it did to people like he and Varys. She wanted a cause to fight. She wanted an injustice to answer. She chased those liberating moments when her people loved her and there was nothing complicated to concern herself with. Not that Tyrion blamed her, but it was hardly a sign of a good ruler, and he often despaired of her.

She’s young, still, he tried to remind himself. But it was difficult when she so often looked at him like he was absurd for suggesting something more tempered than burning all their enemies.

“All I have heard from anyone is that Brienne of Tarth is an honorable woman,” Daenerys said. “Is this not true?”

“I have no doubt it is, but…” Tyrion took a stab in the dark that he had to assume was true. With Jaime looking the way he did, and Brienne looking the way she did, and the way Brienne held that sword in her grasp any time she walked anywhere… “Love is a powerful emotion, and even the most honorable woman might not be able to stand against it.”

“Love?” Daenerys asked. “You believe the Maid of Tarth is in love with your brother? The Kingslayer?”

“Stranger things have happened. I’m serving the daughter of the king my brother killed. You’re opening negotiations with the grandson of the man your father burned. Our past deeds don’t always define us in the eyes of others.”

“She serves the Starks.”

“She carries a Lannister sword. A Valyrian steel sword, no less. Quite a gift to receive. You wouldn’t be nearly so incredulous if you had ever seen his face. He’s quite handsome, my brother. Handsomer than me, I’m told, though I personally don’t see it.”

“And your sister is said to be one of the most beautiful women in the Seven Kingdoms. Yet men stand against her all the time.”

“The Maid of Tarth was with my brother when he lost his hand, your grace,” Tyrion reminded her. “He saved her from rape, and she cared for him when he was ill, when the infection nearly took his life. Jaime was too embarrassed to tell me much, but he told me enough. And my brother can be charming when he isn’t an ass. His looks help him greatly in that regard. It would be easy enough for a maid like her to fall in love with a man like that. A roaring lion turned helpless kitten. Why not? She isn’t exactly conventional looking, and I know that she has never pleased any of the prospects her father had lined up for betrothals. She is the sole heir to a passably wealthy island, and still no takers. My brother can be sharp and unkind, but he respects her, and that’s more than most men have done.”

Daenerys was frowning at him, and he wondered if he had said too much.

“The more I hear of Westeros, the less I like it,” Daenerys mused. “Perhaps it’s not as bad as other places I’ve been, but…she is honorable, and a good fighter. I wish that was enough for her.”

“As do I, your grace. I don’t say any of this to disparage her.”

“Do you think she will be disloyal to us because of your brother? Is that it?” Daenerys asked. Tyrion shook his head.

“I only mean to say that her feelings for my brother might be useful. Good enough that she’s loyal to the Starks as long as the Starks are our allies. Less useful if something goes wrong. But if I remind Brienne of our connection, and if I convince her that we mean to see my brother safe…”

“Ah,” Daenerys said, smiling slightly. “I see your true aims here.”

“I’m merely suggesting an alternative.”

“I’ve told you before that your brother will receive a fair trial if he is taken alive. That’s all I can offer, Tyrion.”

“Yes, your grace,” Tyrion said. He tried not to grumble too badly, but he could tell that Daenerys heard it. She smiled at him. It was indulgent and a bit insulting, all things considered.

“Varys assures me that the Starks will be loyal once their loyalty is earned. That’s my goal now. I don’t want to make things more complicated than they need to be for the sake of appeasing your fear for your brother.”

She was looking at him very seriously. Sometimes, when she looked at him like that, he could see the ruler that she might be if she continued to learn. Often, it was when she was chastising him. He didn’t like to think about what that meant.

“Of course, your grace,” he said.

When he had been given leave to exit, he did. That conversation certainly had not settled his nerves any.

I tried, Jaime, he thought. It was a painful feeling, to fail one’s brother. Was this what Jaime felt every time he looked the other way or ignored some cruelty that Cersei had inflicted? Fresh off his embarrassment with the queen, Tyrion found himself hoping that it was.

I can’t fix your mess for you, brother, he thought. You’re on your own now. Try not to fuck it up too badly.

Chapter Text

Arya approached the spot where Sansa liked to stand: on the walk overlooking the training yard. She’d noticed that Sansa spent more time outdoors than she used to, and it was usually spent either here or on the battlements above, looking out at the snow. Quiet, blank, her eyes distant.

Arya didn’t like to admit to anxiousness about it, but it always made her a bit unsettled when she spotted Sansa out there alone. It was so…un-Sansa. They’d both changed a lot since they were last together, but sometimes the proof of it rattled her.

“I don’t know,” Jon said when Arya wondered aloud why Sansa seemed to need to be there. He’d sounded worried too, though he pretended not to be. “She’s different. From how she was.”

That was true enough. Sansa was steelier than she used to be, for one. She had a strength that reminded Arya sometimes of their mother and sometimes of their father. A way of speaking to people that made them feel heard and seen but not catered to. She used to be so pleasant, all the time. It drove Arya mad, that she was so accommodating of everything. Arya had struggled and squirmed away every time someone tried to make her more like Sansa. More polite. More gentle. More ladylike. That wasn’t what she had wanted. And Sansa had been so good at it. That was the worst part. She’d always made it seem easy, and she made Arya feel stupid just by existing because Arya didn’t think it was easy at all. Septa Mordane hadn’t been cruel about it, but she didn’t need to be. It just stung, not being good at things that came so easily to Sansa.

But Sansa was different now. She was still polite, but the pleasantness had all been eroded away, leaving something colder in its place. Not cold cold, not as icy as she probably thought she seemed, but colder. She listened to people, but she didn’t bend before them. She smiled at people, but it didn’t reach her eyes unless she was truly glad to see them. She’d had so much of her old self stripped away, layers of her peeling back until this was all that was left. The center of her. Still Sansa, but without the pretty armor that she used to wear. She didn’t trust that armor to protect her anymore.

Arya had always hated that armor that Sansa wore. She’d always liked Sansa better when she was yelling and screaming and fighting. It never took very much. Arya would just have to provoke her, and Sansa would flash through, past those careful layers of fake kindness. She was always so good about acting like things didn’t bother her, but Arya was good enough at bothering her to make her snap.

She didn’t want to bother Sansa anymore. Still, she had to wonder what Sansa would do if Arya got beneath her skin again. Somehow she doubted it would be the same as it used to. It probably wouldn’t feel very good, either.

She made her steps heavy as she walked towards Sansa, giving her approach away. Jon had been right that first day when he said not to sneak up on Sansa. Arya hadn’t, but she had seen the way Sansa got tense and white and shaken whenever someone approached her when she was unawares. She’d hold onto the folds of her dress afterward, and Arya hated it. She hated to see it. That physical response to fear that Sansa had learned because there wasn’t anybody around to protect her.

Sansa turned to see who it was. She grimaced and turned back away.

“Ugh,” she said. “Do you have to wear that?”

Arya laughed in Littlefinger’s voice.

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” she said. His voice was as slimy as the rest of him. Arya didn’t like wearing a lot of faces, but his was the worst. She could feel him. The way his mind worked. She wanted to tear it off and burn it, but it was too useful, and she was strong enough to bear it. “He was a shit person. I’m glad you let me kill him.”

“I am too,” Sansa said, and she still wouldn’t look.

“But it’ll all be for nothing if his spies think he’s dead for real.”

Sansa sighed, braced herself, and then turned to look at Arya again, still grimacing. Arya knew that meant she agreed, though she wasn’t happy about it. That was fine. Arya wasn’t really happy about it, either.

After Bran told them everything that Littlefinger had done to their family, Sansa and Jon wanted to put him on trial or something. Kill him in front of all those Vale men with a proper explanation so that everyone would know what a snake he was. So they could get rid of him without losing any of their army. But Arya had talked Sansa into this instead. What good was being able to wear people’s faces if no one ever let you do it? And Littlefinger was useful. Already, in the week since it had happened, Arya had learned ten thousand things through Littlefinger’s network of spies that she never would have learned otherwise. They had gotten rid of the kitchen lady who was selling him secrets. They had sent soldiers to rescue the girls in the brothel who were only there because Littlefinger had bought them. They'd swapped stablemasters because the old one had been squirreling food and supplies away for Littlefinger if he had to make his escape. Winterfell would be safer when all his little rats had been taken out of their positions. Sansa could complain all she wanted about how unsettling it was to see Arya in the man’s face, but they both knew it was a good idea.

Jon, though. Nobody hated it more than Jon. He’d gotten angry at Arya for suggesting it and then angry at Sansa for supporting it, and even now he was still all sullen and broody about it even though it was done. That did bother Arya a bit, though she tried to hide it. If Jon wanted to be stupid, he could just keep avoiding her when she was dressed up as Littlefinger. It had been the right choice. Jon’s anger didn’t change that.

“He wasn’t as clever as he thought he was,” she said, because she knew that Sansa needed to hear it. Sansa was still wearing the tenseness and the anxiety that Littlefinger used to bring her. Arya could see the way she locked up every time she saw Arya approaching with his face. She always looked for a second like she thought he was still alive, until she remembered. It made Arya feel sorry for her, and she didn’t like that.

“No,” Sansa admitted quietly. “I suppose not. I thought it was going to take a lot more maneuvering to get to a place where we could remove him. I didn’t count on Bran.” She smiled a little at Arya. “And I definitely didn’t count on you.”

Arya laughed, and she leaned against the railing beside Sansa in a way she knew Littlefinger would have done. It was satisfying to know that he would never do it again. Sansa was holding a scroll in her hands, twisting it idly between them.

“What’s that?” Arya asked, drawing her sister’s attention back down to it. Sansa hesitated, and Arya could see the way she forced herself to remember that this wasn’t Littlefinger and she didn’t have to hold tightly to her secrets around Arya.

“It’s…it’s a letter from Jaime Lannister,” she said.

She wasn’t lying, obviously. Arya could see that even before Sansa showed the Lannister seal.

“Why is the Kingslayer writing to you?” she asked. She couldn’t help but sound defensive, though she didn’t mean to. She didn’t want to, either. She wanted Sansa to know that Arya trusted her, but she couldn’t stop herself. Sometimes Sansa just made no sense. Sansa took a deep breath, and Arya couldn’t tell what she was feeling.

“We write to each other,” she admitted. “We have been, for a little while. I didn’t think I would again.” She looked over at Arya. She hesitated, and then she said, with a half-smile, like she wasn’t sure how Arya would take it. “I think he’s in love with Brienne.”

Arya remembered Brienne. The Lannister lion on her sword. How fiercely she had fought with The Hound. Arya had been relieved when she learned that Brienne had been telling the truth about her quest. It was nice to know that Sansa had someone so brave protecting her against the Boltons. Made her feel a little silly for running off, too, but she was glad she’d done it. She needed to go to Braavos. Or maybe it was just easier to tell herself that. She probably could have learned to fight from Brienne, too, if she’d stayed. It just made the things that happened in Braavos easier to remember when she told herself that she’d needed to do it.

Then again, she would have never learned how to wear other peoples’ faces if she hadn’t gone to Braavos, and this Littlefinger thing would have been a lot more complicated. Better this way.

“If he’s in love with Brienne, he’s smarter than I thought he was,” Arya admitted. “But you always see fluffy romance in everything.”

Sansa snorted and looked down at the letter, shrugging one shoulder.

“Not anymore,” she said. “But even you would have to see it in this.” She sighed, and she tucked the letter away. It was fairly large, for a letter from their enemy.

“What do you write him about? Just to talk about Brienne?”

“Not always. That was why he wrote me at first, to see if she survived the battle. I wrote back to tell him she did, and then he replied, and now...maybe I wanted to feel less frightened of him, at first. Maybe that’s why it started.”

“Do you?”

“Feel less frightened? Yes. His letters are funny.”

“You don’t think he wants to marry you too, do you?”

“No.”

“You think it’s true he fucked his sister?”

“Arya!”

“What? I’m just asking. I heard all kinds of stories, and that one seemed true. Then again, I heard lots of stories about everyone, and most of those were rubbish.” Including that one about their mother, Brienne, and Jaime Lannister in a cell in Riverrun, but she was hardly going to repeat that one if just the word ‘fucked’ made Sansa go all pink. “I was just wondering. Suppose Brienne’s a better choice. Doing it with his sister was probably a bad one.”

“Well, yes,” Sansa admitted with a small smile. She was looking at Arya the way she did sometimes. Kind of wondering, like she couldn’t believe Arya was with her. Glad to have her sister back, even when she was wearing Littlefinger’s face. It always made Arya feel a bit soft inside, which she hated. “But…yes. I…it’s true, about he and Cersei.”

Maybe that’s why you like writing to him so much, Arya thought. You understand him. But she didn’t say it. Days ago she would have, maybe. Years ago for sure. But she felt differently now. She had seen too many terrible things to be cruel about this one.

“Why didn’t you stop writing him? You just said you were going to, but didn’t. Do you think it’s a trap? Do you think you should stop? I can make you stop, if you want.”

Sansa laughed at her, which Arya liked enough that she didn’t point out that Sansa should be acting the same as she always acted with Littlefinger before. Quiet and blank and still.

“I didn’t think I wanted to anymore,” Sansa admitted. “Bran told me a lot of things, and it made me not want to write him anymore, even though Bran said I should. But I suppose I missed writing him, and I suppose I wanted him to know. I wanted to tell him what I knew, and I wanted him to explain himself. I wanted him to know.” She deflated slightly, her shoulders slumping. “Of course he couldn’t even give me that. He was just…not himself at all, and now I have to worry about him, too. On top of everything else.”

“You’re worried. About the Kingslayer.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about the man who attacked our father.”

Arya thought for a second, unbelievably, that she had pushed her sister too far by saying it. Sansa flinched as if struck, and she gripped the railing in front of her. This was the Jon secret all over again. Something Arya could observe but not even begin to understand. The Kingslayer. Arya remembered him. Handsome and horrible and with a cruel, mocking smile. How was he the man that wrote the letter that Sansa worried between her hands out of anxiety for him?

“Understanding doesn’t mean forgiving,” Sansa said, finally. “Bran told me that. But it helps with forgiving, I think. I know how far I would go to help my family, now. It’s easier to understand him than it was.”

“You sound like Bran. All mysterious and shit. Don’t you start saying you can talk to crows now.”

“I won’t,” Sansa laughed. She was still wary, but she was hopeful, too. “And I can’t. Unfortunately. That might be useful.”

“Especially if you were doing it, because you wouldn’t feel the need to be all vague about it,” Arya said with a snort.

Sansa smiled and said, “Bran also told me not to tell you some things.” She looked quite smug about that, and it made Arya laugh, because she could tell that it wasn’t meant in any mean way. It was nice to laugh about things like this with Sansa. She wondered if their parents would be happy, if they could see them.

Well. Maybe not about the fact that Arya was wearing the face of one of the men who had gotten them killed. But aside from that.

“Bran’s still a shit,” she decided. “He’s just better at hiding it.” She didn’t know if that was true. It felt nicer than just accepting that he was going to be all blank and weird from now on. She didn’t want him to be like that. “You can’t keep secrets from me, you know.”

“I know,” Sansa said. “But this one isn’t my secret to give away. If Bran wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

“Fine. Whatever. You’re welcome for murdering your enemy for you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Outwitting him, being all clever and sneaking around and convincing him that you needed to talk to him right away so he should come with me. Not a big deal. Not very helpful.”

“Arya,” Sansa groaned.

“Lord Baelish, remember? Stupid.” Arya smiled at her. She wanted to take this face off. “It’s funny. Everyone has a weakness. That’s one of the first things I had to learn, and it’s true. Even the strongest person. Everyone has that one thing, or that one person, they can’t resist. You were his. Did you know that?”

“Mother was his. I was just a convenient stand in. I look like her but was young and stupid enough to actually believe him for a time. He wanted me to be mother for him, but with all her fierceness stripped away. That wasn’t love.”

“No, it wasn’t. But it was still weakness. He wanted you too badly to be suspicious when I took him to that dark part of the castle and cut his throat. Even as he was dying, he seemed confused. Like he couldn’t understand why you weren’t there.”

“Arya,” Sansa warned. She was right. That was too much. Arya shrugged.

“It’s just weird, is all. I don’t think I’ve ever been someone’s weakness before. I was wondering how it felt.”

Sansa breathed out slowly. She stared down at the training yard, at the mud rapidly disappearing beneath the snow. More snow again. Lord Baelish had hated the snow, but Arya loved it. It was always a good excuse to take off Littlefinger’s face and be herself again. Anyone would believe he was locked away in his rooms, or sitting by the fire in the library, or just conveniently not around.

“I think I liked it at first,” Sansa admitted. “Because I just…I wanted someone to care about me. I had a handmaiden who cared for me, I think. Shae. But she couldn’t help me get away. She couldn’t do anything to protect me. Father was dead, and I couldn’t get out of the city, and Littlefinger was there. When he took me to the Eyrie and Aunt Lysa was…well, it doesn’t matter. It felt good at first. It felt powerful. But he wanted too much, and I didn’t want it at all, and then I realized that it didn’t make me feel strong to be someone’s weakness. It just made me feel afraid, like I needed to protect myself from him more than anybody else. It would have probably been different if it was someone else. I don’t think Littlefinger knew how to love without destroying everything about it.”

“He didn’t,” Arya agreed. “You’re Jon’s weakness too, you know. And it isn’t like that with him.”

“We’re both Jon’s weakness. Family is Jon’s weakness.”

Which was true, and it made Arya feel warm every time she thought about it. It wasn’t exactly what she had been talking about, but she supposed that was true. Family was her weakness as well. She supposed it was Sansa’s. Was Arya a weakness for Sansa? Probably. It made Arya feel much warmer than she expected. But that hadn’t been what she meant to say.

“It’s different with you,” she said.

Sansa looked at her, and Arya was confused by the expression on her face. She had expected Sansa to be happy to hear it. Instead, she looked…

Afraid. She looked afraid.

“Arya,” Sansa said sharply. Another warning. Arya didn’t understand.

“What? It’s true. I don’t know what you’re so upset about. I know it’s exactly what you want to hear.”

Now Sansa reacted like Arya had slapped her, and she had gone even paler, the red spots of color on her cheeks disappearing beneath the icy chill. Before she turned to stalk away, Arya saw that her eyes had started to get wet with tears.

And, well. Arya felt guilty. Annoyed, at first, but that faded quickly. Or muted, anyway; there was still a bit of annoyance.

“Ridiculous,” she muttered, though her heart clenched to think of the way Sansa had looked at her, and then she headed back into the castle to take of Littlefinger’s face and find her sister. 

Chapter Text

Negotiations had been going well the past few days, after an awkward first few of he and Daenerys attempting to reach out to each other without giving too much away of themselves. There were still uncomfortable moments between them, and they had still been unable to agree on the important things that needed to be addressed. But they had talked of themselves, of their commonalities and their differences. Daenerys loved to hear stories from when he was a child. He always worried he was boring her as he told some tale of the mischief he had gotten up to, but he would look and see real mirth in her expression as she imagined all the things he was telling her. She’d never had a family like that. She loved to hear him tell of it.

And he loved to hear her stories of traveling, of the things across the sea that she had seen. She showed him the art and the clothing and the weaponry. She introduced him to her people, and he spent hours in conversation with them, usually with Missandei translating for him. He couldn’t learn enough. Davos was always with him, always lightly disapproving and nervous that the famously reckless King of the North was going to overstep somehow, but Robb’s problem had never been in charming people. No, his problem as a ruler had been much simpler than that. He had been selfish. He had chosen his own heart above the needs of his kingdom, and he wouldn’t do that again.

Brienne worried, too, and Robb understood why. She watched the way he smiled at the dragon queen. She watched the way he kissed her hand after their meetings, and the way that Daenerys always colored a bit when he did.

“You worry that I’m in danger of losing my heart again,” he pointed out once as they stood on the balcony of their quarters and watched the dragons diving and playing over the waves. Brienne only shrugged, but he knew it was true.

Robb wasn’t worried, but he made sure to be as correct as Brienne and Sansa and probably Jon would want him to be. He was never rude to her. He was never demanding. He exchanged frequent letters with Jon about the Night King, and he showed Daenerys the answers. When Jon mentioned the effectiveness of Dragonglass, Daenerys mentioned the Dragonglass mines beneath the castle, and she offered to add it to their negotiations. He thanked her, and they smiled at each other, but he was always careful.

Talisa still smiled at him in dreams. He wanted to tell that to Brienne. Remind her that he was in no danger of losing his heart again. It had already been lost. How could he possibly lose it a second time? He wasn’t built for another love like that. He couldn’t do it. Not to himself. Not to Talisa. Not to his people, who would hate him if they thought he was in danger of failing them again.

It wasn’t so bad a thing, to connect with someone, though. He and Daenerys weren’t necessarily similar, but they had experienced enough similar things that she was easier to talk to than he had anticipated. Ever since that first day, when they had been so awkward and formal with each other, they had moved closer to understanding each other, and that could only be a good thing. He knew that she was beginning to trust him. She had asked him a lot about Jon, and through his letters she was beginning to have an understanding of this man who was her nephew. Robb knew he was technically not a prisoner here—she never told him he couldn’t leave—but he also knew that he couldn’t go back north without securing some kind of alliance, and he was glad that he had managed to find a way past her defenses and his own at the same time.

She called a meeting of her advisors early one morning, and Robb and Brienne and Davos were all invited to come along. By the time they arrived, Daenerys was pacing around the war table, glaring at it. Varys was standing near the back of the room, and Tyrion was sitting beside Daenerys, in the middle of trying to explain something.

“If we gather my forces now, will we reach Highgarden in time?” Daenerys asked.

“If we sail them, perhaps. My source says they’re moving slowly, but…it’s still more likely we’d catch them on the way back.”

Daenerys nodded. She examined the table again.

“Is Dorne prepared to send aid to Highgarden?” she asked. Tyrion made a considering expression.

“I believe so,” he finally said. “They might not like it.”

“They don’t have to like it. I need the Lannister forces delayed. Varys?”

“I’ll send a raven,” Varys replied.

“We sail for Highgarden, then. We must be there before it falls.”

“It’ll be close,” Tyrion warned her. “And without the Greyjoys, our fleet is weaker than it ought to be.”

“It’s still fast, isn’t it?” Daenerys asked, one eyebrow arched. “That’s all I need for it to be.”

Tyrion nodded, apparently recognizing a losing battle when he faced one. Daenerys walked around the table until she stood in front of Robb and Davos.

“I understand you were a smuggler,” she said with a small, sly smile.

Davos went with the others to make preparations for the trip. Daenerys and Robb were left alone, with only Brienne and Grey Worm at the door. Outside it, this time. That felt like progress.

“I won’t ask you to fight,” she said. Her languid grace was gone, replaced with a ferocity and anticipation for the battle to come that he recognized in an echo of the man he was before that cursed wedding. “I know you didn’t come here for that. But if you wish to see what kind of queen I will be, you should come with us.”

Robb tried to imagine what Sansa would advise. He thought it likely she would say to stay out of the dragon queen’s business until they knew for sure that she was going to be a worthy ally. But Sansa wasn’t here, and even if Daenerys didn’t turn out to be a worthy ally, he thought that saving Highgarden from Cersei Lannister was a worthy cause.

“I haven’t fought in a real battle since I was injured,” he admitted quietly. He traced the path they would take around the south of Westeros to get to Highgarden. It seemed an impossible distance, but a fleet of ships could move faster than men on a march, especially when those men were delayed by forces from Dorne.

“You don’t have to fight in this one,” Daenerys advised. “Tyrion won’t be fighting either. Nor will Varys. They will watch from a distance.”

“I’m not one for watching,” Robb admitted. “I want to fight.”

What better way to prove his use to her, after all? He knew he was a fierce fighter, and his training with Brienne had made him still fiercer. Besides, his willingness to help her without a formal alliance might make it easier for her to trust him when the time came, and that was what was really important. Dragonglass was good. They would need it in the war against the Night King. Dragonfire would be better.

“Then you’ll fight,” Daenerys said. She was looking at him with something sparkling in her gaze that Robb could not help but respond do. He was glad Brienne was outside the door. He didn’t move toward Daenerys, and he wouldn’t, but he felt something inside him call out to something inside her. A foolish want. She was beautiful. That was all it was. “And afterward,” she said. “We’ll speak more about my nephew, and about the Night King.” She smiled slightly. “Do you know how fast my dragons can fly?”

“No,” Robb admitted with a small smile.

“Neither do I, truly. I’d like to find out. We could be in Winterfell in a day’s time, I’m sure.”

Robb had only seen the dragons from a distance, but he smiled at the thought. They were fearsome beasts, and he knew he didn’t want to see one when its mother was not present, but he would like the chance when she was.

“If only direwolves could fly,” Robb said. “I could have Jon come down here.”

Daenerys laughed. Clear and full at the thought. It faded slightly when she looked back down at the map.

“If only I had a thousand dragons and winged direwolves to get my people to Highgarden,” she said. “We must hope the wind is with us. Varys says it will be.”

“He can tell the weather, now?”

“So he says,” Daenerys allowed with a small smile. “I suppose we have no choice but to trust him. I cannot abandon my allies now. I have few enough of them.”

Robb nodded. He couldn’t tell if she wanted affirmation that he considered himself her ally, but he wouldn’t say it, regardless. He did. More and more, he found himself liking the dragon queen. But he had to be smarter than he was before, or else this second chance at kingship meant nothing.

He met Brienne in the hall, and they walked to their quarters to prepare. They didn’t speak until they were back there, and then he quickly gathered supplies to write to Sansa and Jon and update them. Their own updates to him were sparse and often contained little or no new information, and he knew that was wise, considering they had no idea what his situation was. Still, he wished for more news. He hoped that this letter would set Sansa’s mind at ease, at least. She may not like his choice, but she would value the explanation, and perhaps she would be more open in her next letter to him.

When the letter was done, he tucked it into his jacket for safety. He would rather see it away himself. He had no doubt that Varys would find some way to glean its contents regardless, but there was no reason not to make the man work for it.

He faced Brienne, who was standing by the window and watching the beach below as it teemed with activity.

“You need not fight, you know,” Robb said. Brienne turned to look at him, and he had to laugh at the affronted expression on her face.

“I know my duty,” she reminded him. “I swore an oath.”

“Yes, and it’s easy to say those words.”

Brienne knew his mind better than she used to, and she did not bristle or get angry when she would have before. She only shook her head.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” she said. “I have known this day was coming. If I truly feared it, I would have asked to stay behind in Winterfell. Did I?”

“No,” Robb admitted. “And it isn’t your loyalty I fear. But it’s one thing to have the right intentions. It’s another entirely to carry them out.”

“I know that, as well.”

“I suppose you would. I lost a crown once for love, you know.”

“A love returned. We’ve had this conversation before. It’s different.”

“The man gave you a blade and a suit of armor even knowing that you would use them both to defend his family’s enemies. Perhaps it isn’t love, but it’s something. Regard. Respect.”

“What is it you want me to say?”

“I want you to be careful.”

“I’m not a queen,” Brienne pointed out. Maddening in her confidence. Or perhaps it wasn’t the confidence that was so maddening. Perhaps it was the resignation that irked him. She spoke like someone who already understood the outcome. “I have nothing so precious as a crown to lose.”

“You have your life,” he said. “Is that not precious? It is to my family. It is to me.”

He had not meant to say so much, but it wasn’t untrue. She stared at him as if expecting some joke to follow it, but she wouldn’t find one. Not in his expression. Not in his tone. Not in his intentions. She should have known this by now, but he understood Brienne better than he used to. He knew how little she trusted others when it came to knowing her own worth. When she saw that he was serious, her eyes glimmered. She ducked her head and nodded at him. She couldn’t speak for several moments, and he felt his own eyes welling in response.

“I swore no vows to you,” she said. “But I swore them to your sister. To guard her back. Beyond them, beyond what I have chosen as my duty, I would choose your family. It has been an honor to serve you, and I will do whatever it takes to continue to serve you in the future.”

Robb nodded, relieved and saddened both. He believed her. He was ready to fight beside her. He knew he could count on her.

Perhaps it would be better for her if Robb ordered that she remain behind, but he knew that she wouldn’t thank him for it, and he knew that he couldn’t do it to her. He didn’t want to punish her for feeling too much for a man she should not have. That didn’t serve anyone.

Robb didn’t trust as easily as he used to. But he would trust Lady Brienne with anything. With his life. With his sister. With the future of his house. He just wished he wasn’t risking her heart in the process.

Chapter Text

When Sansa was young, she was afraid of the crypts. She was afraid of the grim-faced Stark kings and their swords. She was afraid of the older statues because they were worn down and broken in places, and it made her think of maimed ghosts wandering the crypts at night. Robb and Jon and Theon used to play pranks down there, too, so she never went unless she knew that they were away. The time Jon covered himself in flour and pretended to be a ghost was seared too deeply into her memory.

The one thing she liked in the crypts, before, the one bright spot, was the statue of Aunt Lyanna. She was beautiful down there among all the dour men and their stony expressions. Lyanna was uplifting, light. Sansa used to ask her father if it was a good likeness, and he had smiled and said that stone could never capture Lyanna as she was, but that the artist had done his best. Sansa had liked that answer, though she knew the question made her father sad. He missed his sister. He was sad that his children had never gotten to know her.

How different would everything have been if Lyanna had survived? Would she have stayed in Winterfell and raised Jon as their cousin instead of their half-brother? Would she have lived in the Red Keep with him? Would Rhaegar have married her and legitimized Jon? She didn’t know. She hoped not. That hardly seemed fair to Princess Elia, although maybe Princess Elia would be alive and back in Dorne. Sansa used to think that being set aside was the worst thing that could happen to a queen, but she knew better than that now.

If Lyanna lived, Jon would have had a mother. Her own mother was never much of one, she knew. Not to Jon. Catelyn’s energies were all for her own children, and at best she felt resentful of Jon for taking up her husband’s energy in even the smallest ways. Sansa closed her eyes as she sat before Lyanna’s statue. She felt herself growing smaller. She had worshipped her mother. She still loved her mother, but she knew so much more now than she used to, and it was difficult to sit before the statue of Aunt Lyanna and justify another mother’s failures.

I’ll protect him, she promised the statue. I’ll keep him safe for you. I’ll make sure he knows he’s loved.

It was the least she could do. It was the most she should do, too, no matter how badly she wanted to do more, and no matter how much her broken mind and her wasted heart told her differently.

She heard the quiet footsteps behind her, and she knew that it was on purpose. Arya never made noise when she didn’t mean to. Sansa turned and looked at her, grateful when she saw her little sister’s face and not the one that used to belong to Baelish.

Arya looked up at the statue of Lyanna, and then she sat beside Sansa, close enough to press their arms together. She always sat this close when they were children, before Sansa started snapping at her to “get off, Arya”. Sansa pressed closer now so Arya would know she was welcome.

“I’m sorry,” Arya said.

“That’s a first.”

“Shut up. I mean it.” Sansa reluctantly looked at her, and Arya was looking back. Her expression was regretful, and Sansa sighed and shifted so she could drape her cloak over Arya’s shoulders, covering both of them. Arya never seemed cold, but it was cold down here, and Sansa wanted an excuse to be closer. “I forget sometimes. Forget that you aren’t my enemy anymore.”

“We were never enemies,” Sansa laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m not! We were enemies. Not like proper enemies, but you know. For little girls.”

“Right,” Sansa continued to chuckle. When Arya first came back, Sansa had been so wary, almost afraid of her little sister, not knowing what Arya had become. Or perhaps knowing and worrying, because Arya’s new skills were unknown and terrifying. But she was still Arya. She still called too many things “stupid”. She still scowled in the same old way. Her nose still scrunched up when she was thinking too hard. She was Arya, and Sansa loved her, and she despaired of her, and she laughed more often than she used to around her. She and Arya had both changed, and it felt sometimes like they might be able to get along like this, if only they tried a little harder. Better than they used to get along, anyway.

“I meant it when I said I was sorry,” Arya grumbled. “I shouldn’t push things the way I do. I just want to understand.”

“You don’t have to understand anything,” Sansa said. “I wouldn’t want you to. There’s nothing to understand. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t make sense?” Arya asked. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Of course I love him. I love all of you. The other stuff…he was the first man who’d been kind to me in so long. Maybe that’s all it was. It just got stuck there. It’s because of Cersei. It has to be.”

“I don’t know how to fix it,” Arya said. She sounded so like a child for a moment that Sansa tightened her arm around her.

“Neither do I,” she admitted. “I don’t know that you can. I don’t know that anyone can except for me, and I don’t know how to. Everything that’s happened to you…don’t you sometimes feel changed in a way you don’t like?”

“Yes.” Arya’s answer was quick, and she looked away, back down at the darkness and the line of statues. “All the time.”

“We just have to keep going. Father and mother would have wanted us to.”

“And Aunt Lyanna,” Arya said with a smile.

“And Aunt Lyanna,” Sansa agreed. “I’m sorry I keep running away. I’m just trying to forget it all, and talking about it doesn’t help.”

“I don’t know that it’s something you can forget. But I’ll try to stop mentioning it.”

Sansa smiled a little. She supposed that was the best she could hope for. Arya had always been meddlesome. She probably thought it was as simple as finding Sansa an appropriate man to swoon over, or maybe just training her out of her feelings the way Arya tried to teach Nymeria to fetch things for her. Just try hard enough, she probably thought. Try hard enough and the feelings will go away. As if Sansa hadn’t already been trying.

“We have to protect each other now,” she said. “We have to protect Jon. That’s what we should be focusing on. The Northern Lords are placated for now, but they don’t like that he’s half Targaryen, no matter how many times we remind them that he’s also half Stark. Jon didn’t want Robb to legitimize him, but he should. They keep asking me to ‘do something about it’, whatever that means, and Jon keeps asking if he should leave, and Bran…” Sansa shook her head. “Well. Bran is Bran, now. I don’t know what to do about him.”

Arya snorted her agreement, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. Sansa used to be so afraid of these crypts, but she felt safe here now. Arya was at her side. The candles were nowhere close to burning down. She could feel her family with her. This was where she belonged.

Upstairs, she had her people to deal with. The smallfolk and the food shortages. The lords and their whispers about Jon. Jon and his whispers about Jon. She had ravens from Robb and Brienne and Davos to read. She had that long, maudlin, distressing letter from Jaime Lannister to think about and maybe finally answer. There was so much commanding her attention, but not here. Here, it was just her and Arya and the beautiful statue of the aunt she never knew.

“You know, she fell in love with someone she wasn’t supposed to, too,” Arya said suddenly. Quietly. “You should take Brienne down here one day. Maybe Aunt Lyanna will help her.”

Sansa made a noise of acknowledgement, understanding of course that Arya wasn’t really talking about Brienne at all. She was trying to help.

It hit too close to home, anyway. Falling in love with someone you weren’t supposed to. In a way, Sansa had done that with Jaime Lannister. Not love, love. Not romantic love. But she hated how much she had come to care for him through his letters that meant nothing, and how much her anger felt like a void inside her now. Her last letter to him had been biting. She told him exactly what she had learned from Bran. His reply had been long, rambling. Oddly disconcerting, because it was easy to read his distress. He asked for no forgiveness. He offered no excuses. He said what she already knew: that he had always done everything for Cersei.

I don’t want to anymore, he had written. I didn’t want to then, but I did it anyway, because I had to save her. That was all that mattered. Making sure that she survived. That was the only thing that I knew how to do. Perhaps it still is. I march to Highgarden on Cersei’s behalf. Do you truly think this is what I wish for? I wouldn’t have you think that of me, at least. Even if you hate me for every other reason, even if you hate me because I am too weak to stop her when I know I should, know how much I regret it, and all the other deeds I have done before it.

It would have been easy to hate Jaime Lannister once. It was easy to hate him once. Perhaps it would still be easy to hate him if Bran hadn’t talked to her so intently about it. It was clear that for some reason Bran wanted her to care for Jaime Lannister still, and though she wouldn’t pretend to understand that, she knew that Bran had good intentions. It was permission to forgive an act that had crippled him, but Sansa didn’t want it. She didn’t want to forgive any more. She wanted all the horribleness to end.

She would write Jaime back. She hardly understood why. Perhaps it was selfish. Perhaps it was only that she wanted so badly to have a person to count on. A friend, even if it was only through letters, and even if he was still technically their family’s enemy.

Or perhaps he was one of the only other people she knew who’d had feelings for his sister like the ones that she found herself now having for Jon. As distasteful as it was. As horrifying as it was. She knew that he was one of the only people who might understand.

Perhaps, she told herself sometimes. Perhaps we can help each other stop.

Maybe that was what Bran had been thinking. Maybe that was why Bran wanted her to forgive him. Perhaps Bran, like Arya, was only trying to help Sansa fix whatever it was that had broken inside her.

Arya was looking at her. Sansa could tell. She didn’t want to look back. She didn’t want to try and guess whatever it was that was on Arya’s face.

“You keep telling Jon to stay,” Arya said at last. Her voice was careful. Too careful. Sansa braced for it. Arya snuggled closer, like a promise not to say anything too cruel. “Don’t you think it would be easier for you if he left?”

“No.” It was Sansa this time whose answer was so quick. She shook her head. “No,” she said again. “I don’t want him to leave. It doesn’t matter how odd I feel about it, or how uncertain these feelings are. I don’t want him to leave. I want him to be happy. He can pretend as much as he wants to that it wouldn’t hurt him to leave, but I know better than to believe that. He wants to be here, with his family. I wouldn’t ever make him go away just because it might make things easier for me. It wouldn’t, anyway. It isn’t just the bad parts of me that love him.”

She could hardly believe she said that aloud. She expected Arya to mock her for it; it sounded ridiculous, and they weren’t like that, she and Arya. They didn’t share those kinds of things. But Arya was looking at her again, curiously. She nodded.

“All right,” she said. She rested her head on Sansa’s shoulder, and she didn’t try to talk again.

Sansa felt frustrated again. She always felt frustrated, lately. She wanted her mother back. She wanted Robb back. She wanted Arya and Bran to be back to how they were before. She wanted her own feelings for Jon, whatever they were, to leave her in peace. She wished Lyanna was still alive to give him the love that Sansa wanted to give him. She wished his wildling lover was still alive, too. She wished for a million things. She wished more than anything for a person that she could trust completely. Someone who understood her. Someone who would not look at her now and think her broken and disgusting. She couldn’t even count on herself for that anymore.

Chapter Text

Cersei was right. I am a fool.

Jaime swung his left arm, but his aim was imperfect. He dodged another blow from the man he was fighting. His own blade landed only a glancing slash on his opponent’s armor, but another one of the Lannister men was there to take over, crashing in. It was the fifth time that had happened. His men rallied around him, pushing him back. Trying to get him out of the fighting. He wanted to take his sword to them himself.

I can fight. Let me fight.

He had been wanting to fight for weeks. The march down the Ocean Road had been plagued by Greyjoy ships and the raiding parties that went with them. He split his force near Old Oak, and he led half his men to cross the river at Goldengrove. He wanted to approach Highgarden from two sides at once: the Ocean Road and the Rose Road. Randyll Tarly was already leading a force from Horn Hill, having been convinced by Cersei to stand against Daenerys Targaryen, and so that cut off the southern approach. There should not have been any surprises.

Except Dornish fighters had plagued his men ever since he reached the Rose Road, and ravens from Tarly spoke of the same problem. Dorne stepping in to defend Highgarden, of all places. They attacked and then retreated again, over and over, taking minimal losses and wearing the Lannister army down. Jaime should have turned his army back when he had the chance: his men were angry now, and they wanted to press forward and take the castle. There was nothing to get a man’s blood up like an annoying opponent, and that’s what the Dornish were.

The Lannister army had struck back against the Dornish as much as they could, but the enemy soldiers hadn’t been looking to engage. They had looking to wound, delay, sabotage. More than one morning had been wasted in repairs to carts that had been mysteriously disabled in the night, or in tending to horses that had been let loose or lamed.

Still, Jaime had marched on. They were his sister’s orders. It was for her, and for them, and for the Lannister house.

What Lannister house? It’s only the two of you now.

Isn’t that all that matters? Isn’t that what you always said? Then why aren’t you happy?

You’re a fool. A golden fool, just like Cersei.

They had finally begun the approach to Highgarden when they’d seen the army waiting for them. Dornish and Dothraki and men with Highgarden colors. Men in armor he didn’t recognize, and men in armor he unfortunately did. An entire host, and they stood between the Lannisters and Highgarden.

The screams had started from behind them: more Dothraki, riding in. Cutting off his escape.

And so Jaime had fought, as much as his men would let him. They seemed to be bent on standing between he and his targets. The valiant protectors of their maimed commander. A blackness had settled over Jaime’s shoulders early, and it did not seem like to lift.

Why? he asked himself for every man he killed. Why, when it was so plainly hopeless? His body fought anyway. Let me die with sword in hand, at least.

Smoke from the ridge ahead was making it impossible for him to see anything. The Dothraki riders who had appeared in front of them on the Rose Road had set fire to anything they could. Dothraki on horses, cutting through the front lines of his army as he had just shouted them into formation. They set their fires and fired their bolts and swung their curved swords, and it was all Jaime’s men could to do repel them, drive them back.

Then more of them came. And behind them, the footsoldiers.

Jaime had never seen so many people in one army before. The dragon queen sent the whole of her force, it seemed, to meet his on the road to Highgarden. His men from the Ocean Road were approaching from the west, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to help. If they were smart, they’d turn back to Casterly Rock and leave Jaime’s force to be captured.

Cersei hadn’t thought to equip him with an army that could fight against one like this. She had been unconvinced of the threat that Olenna Tyrell posed, and she had insisted that too many men remain behind to guard her and her city.

Fool. You knew it wouldn’t be this simple. You let her talk you into listening, but you knew she was wrong.

He blocked another strike and turned it on his foe. The man went down quickly after that. It was his first unaided kill of the battle. All his men who called him cripple around their campfires and snickered about his once-legendary prowess. He wanted to show them. He wanted them to see. But the fighting continued. There was no time for that.

The Unsullied were as fierce as he had expected. He could hardly keep up with them. His men were all too eager to jump in and take the chance, and some of them fared better than he would have, but many of them simply died in his place. His missing right hand throbbed with the sensation of a clenched fist. If only. If only. It longed to grip his sword and swing it the way he remembered. He would take on this entire army himself if he was whole.

He lunged past a soldier’s blindspot and pierced the man’s back with his blade. Another attacked him, and he ducked and spun and kicked the man’s leg from under him. His golden hand caught another blow, and he used the distraction to stab his attacker through the gut.

I can still fight.

No less a fool, but I can still fight.

There was no chance. He could see that plainly. As a younger man, that would have made him fight all the harder. He would have longed to prove himself wrong. No chance? What were chances when you fought the way he had, once? But he wasn’t that man any longer. He was older and grayer and he didn’t care any longer about what they said about him. They would not say he fought valiantly. They would perhaps say he fought well, but it would be begrudging. It would be for a cripple. He didn’t care. He didn’t care. He only wanted to survive.

Why?

The question startled him this time, and he pushed it away. There was no time for that. Why? Because he had to. Cersei needed him to. He needed to survive. Why? He needed to win this war for her.

Win this war? Why?

For Cersei. For Cersei. Why? She promised that things would be different this time.

Do you want them to be different?

He roared and swung and swung and hit blade and gut and armor and the exposed softness of skin under arms and at the throat. His blade cut through metal and men alike. Widows Wail. A gift from his sweet sister before he left Kings Landing. Granted with a sneer instead of a smile. His son’s sword. What a fucking bastard Joffrey had been. A king Jaime would not have been glad to follow.

Too like his mother?

Shut up, Jaime. The smoke was stinging in his eyes. It was the Whispering Wood again, but this wasn’t fog. This was fires lit to blind his men, to keep them from firing their siege weapons at the dragon queen’s dragons. His blood sang. Pumped. His heart beat harder. Dragons. If she had brought dragons…

Please, let that have been a story. Just a clever story.

One man almost managed to get his sword on flesh, but Jaime danced out of the way. He may not have been as skilled with his left hand as he was with his right, but he still had the right instincts. He could still avoid their blades.

Why?

Do you even know where you are?

He was deep within himself, and he wanted to struggle out, but he was afraid that the despair would take him if he did. He was afraid why would become too loud a question if he heard it unsupported by the safe place within him. That bridge over the stream, where Brienne laughed and toyed with him instead of sneering Kingslayer.

Why was getting louder anyway.

His men around him were fighting and dying and yielding and being struck down anyway by men who didn’t understand or didn’t care. The smoke was in his lungs. He could hardly see anything. At every moment, he expected to hear a dragon. What would a dragon even sound like? He didn’t know. What was he even fighting for? He didn’t know that, either. Cersei. Cersei needs you. You’re fighting for Cersei.

Why?

Cersei. Cersei had blown up the sept and killed all those people. Cersei was losing her grip on their army, and losing her grip on reality. She had lost all three of her children, of their children, and maybe it was that which drove her to this point, but maybe this had been coming for a long time. Maybe it was too much. All the pressure. All the loss. All the fear.

She needed you, and you weren’t there. She needs you again. You can’t abandon her this time.

She didn’t need him. Even he wasn’t so great a fool as to believe that. She hadn’t ever needed him. She thought she did, but perhaps he just made things easier. He was hers to control. That wasn’t need. That wasn’t love. He was knocked on his back by a passing Dothraki on a horse, and one of his men jumped to the gap that he left. He staggered to his feet, and the smoke cleared with a sudden gust of wind.

It was the Whispering Wood. It was the Whispering Wood again, and only five men stood between he and Robb Stark.

Robb Stark.

The smoke was in his eyes. He blinked it out. Robb Stark was still there.

He was bleeding from a cut in his forehead. His hair was stained even redder with blood, and his curls swung as he spun. He fought better than he used to, and he had been formidable before.

He was here.

In the Whispering Wood, Jaime had been a demon of a man, possessed by the need to get to Robb Stark and end the war. Cut the boy down and hobble the north. Get them back in line so that he could return to Kings Landing where he belonged. He had cut through everyone he could. He would have cut through as many people as he needed to. He still thought they were mad for taking him alive instead of putting him down like the rabid beast he had become. It had amused him, trussed up in the middle of the camp, to hear their whispers as the legend of his skill spread further by men who had been there, who had seen with their own eyes what an unfettered monster could achieve.

He would have done anything to get to Robb.

Now, he stood frozen, his sword clutched in his hand. Robb Stark stood there, fighting. Robb Stark on this battlefield all the way across the continent from where he should be. It was not a mistake. It was not some mirage. Robb Stark was here, and that meant that the north had allied with the dragon queen. No wonder there were so many fucking people in this army. All the men in fucking Westeros had joined it.

Cersei had lost. She would refuse to accept it, but she had lost. Their one chance had been if the north could not make common cause with the dragon queen, and Jaime had been sure that the Starks and their fool honor and their personal grudges would keep them from aligning with the daughter of the man who had burned their former lord alive. Even if it was against Cersei, he thought, surely they would not forgive.

Another Dothraki swiped at him, and Jaime fought him off, but still Robb Stark was in his sights.

Your chance to end the war, he thought.

Sansa Stark’s last letter to him burned in his mind. All of Sansa Stark’s letters. She loved her fool brother, didn’t she? She loved both her brothers, and Jaime had read and reread her last letter with its dripping hate, and he felt like a fool child and an old man at once, losing a loved one for his own faults. He couldn’t…

To end the war…

A war you started. You pushed a boy out a window, and all the rest followed.

To end the war.

You’d never beat him. He wouldn’t even have to try very hard.

You could end the war now, here. If they see you fall, your men will yield.

Lightness settled over him. A curious, cotton-stuffed feeling in his head.

To end the war.

Why not?

Robb Stark took a shallow cut on the arm, and he redoubled his efforts. Jaime’s right hand throbbed again. He imagined the fingers unfurling and grasping the hilt of his sword.

He could push through and surprise Robb. He could fight him. He could take him down. Perhaps he would die in the effort, but perhaps he would take Robb with him.

That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

That was what he should want.

It was what Cersei wanted.

His sword was in his left hand. His glove was sticky and tacky with blood that ran down the hilt. He flexed his fingers. He could do it.

End the war. For Cersei.

She would be an uncontested queen, just as you want. It is what you want, isn’t it?

No. It wasn’t. That lightness wouldn’t go away. His instincts wanted him to fight. His pride and his family loyalty and his sense of duty. But…

Honor. What of honor?

Honor compels me, she had said, in that tent. What did honor compel him to do?

End the war.

The smoke billowed past him, stranding him in an island of death. The smell of blood. The sounds of the screaming and the wounded. There was a man at his feet clutching his arm at the elbow. The rest of it had been hewn off, and he was bleeding from the gut, besides. Jaime grimaced and looked away. The smoke cleared enough to see Robb Stark again. But he was not alone.

Brienne had stepped between them.

You’re supposed to be at Winterfell. You’re supposed to be with Sansa. She would have written to warn me.

But Sansa hated him now, didn’t she? Why would she warn the man who crippled her brother?

Smoke stung his eyes, and Brienne was still there.

A vision. A nightmare. A punishment from the gods of some kind. No.

Brienne’s sword was raised against him, and she stalked towards him, aiming to push him back, away from Robb. Jaime heard the boy calling Brienne’s name. She swung and killed one of Jaime’s men who jumped to his aid. Jaime’s own sword met hers when she tried to go for another, saving his man. Blocking Brienne’s blow.

What are you doing?

Brienne’s eyes met his. Her maiden’s heart is breaking. He had thought it once, in Riverrun, when she would have faced him down. Now they were here again.

“Ser Jaime,” she said.

“Lady Brienne,” he replied.

Their swords met, a song, a flash as the twin blades clashed. They came apart and then their blades kissed again. It was a dance more than it was a true fight. Lady Brienne was almost elegant with Oathkeeper in hand. Jaime had been whole the last time they fought, and she had almost beaten him anyway. She had only improved since then. He flung out his gold hand to stop one of his men from joining in. This was his fight. His choice. He would not see any more of his men die for this, but he would have them watch, and see, and know. He would have them tell of it, later. Sing of it, even. He almost smiled.

It should have been over already. Her attacks were weak. She wasn’t trying to kill him. It shouldn’t have made him angry, but it did. Kill me, he wanted to say. Or at least make it a fair fight. End it quickly. I’m tired.

Tired. That was it. He was so tired of all of this. The war would end with him, and he wanted it to end. He wanted to rest. He had brought more than enough pain to the world of men. He had killed one unjust king, and his lust for his sister had made the world a new one. He had crippled a boy to save his sister and their children, and his children had died and he and his sister soon would join them.

He had loved, foolishly, all his life, but he had never known what it was like to be loved. Not like how he thought it was meant to be.

Brienne. It could have been anybody else. It could have been any man on this battlefield. But of course it was Brienne.

“Yield,” she said, early in the fight.

“No,” he replied, and he struck at her again.

His own strikes were weak enough, and that was the only reason he didn’t pull them. Brienne anticipated his every move. She kicked his feet from under him. She landed him on his knees. His back. He struggled to his feet every time. He would not yield. He longed to yield to her, but he couldn’t. It would be a slow death, yielding. Better this one, on the battlefield, by a worthy woman who deserved to have the songs sung for her. She tripped him again, and she tried to straddle him, tried to press her blade against his neck, but he used his golden hand to push her aside and climb again to his feet. He wavered, but he stayed standing. She was beginning to despair. He could see the way her eyes and her strikes both became wilder. She kept looking back to make sure that Robb was all right. Any other man, she would have cut him down by now to return to her duty. He was always dividing her loyalties, wasn’t he?

“Yield,” she said again.

“You know I can’t yield. It’s over if I do.”

“It’s over anyway, Jaime!” Brienne cried. Jaime struck at her again. She blocked it and turned it away and grabbed him by the collar of his armor. She pulled him in. Her enormous blue eyes were wild with the heat of battle, and for a moment he thought she would kiss him. “Jaime!” she shouted over the sounds of the fight around them. “It’s over! Daenerys has won!”

He pushed himself free of her like an unruly child. A Dothraki attacked him, and he blindly struck out and managed to deflect the blade. More of his men rushed forward to fight Brienne, but Jaime waved them off. It’s for your own good, he wanted to say. She’ll gut you all without breaking a sweat.

She was sweating against him, though. Much harder to keep from killing a man who was begging for it. Couldn’t she see? Couldn’t she understand?

“She has dragons, Jaime!” Brienne shouted. “And she’s on her way!”

Dragonfire. Burning.

Burn them all.

And Brienne was with her.

Jaime froze, and Brienne didn’t pull her swing enough. She pulled it, at the last moment, and the tip of her sword only cut through his cheek instead of opening the top of his head. She dropped back, panting, horrified. Her maiden’s heart is breaking.

Why couldn’t he stop thinking that? Why must she look at him like that? On anyone else, he would say the welling tears were because of the smoke still billowing around them, but he knew. He had known for so long. He just didn’t want to see it. How could she care for him? Oathbreaker. Man without honor. She should never have named her sword for him. Heartbreaker, perhaps. Sister-fucker. Golden fool.

The blood trickled down his cheek, and he wiped it off. He could feel it smear across his skin. Brienne was staring at it. Stricken.

“I will not yield to her,” he said.

“You will yield to me,” Brienne said in anguished reply. Her sword was shaking in her grasp. No, it was she who shook. She was staring at him. She was afraid of him. Afraid of what he was going to make her do.

“You knew it would come to this,” he said. He wished he sounded more commanding. Older. Less soft. Less spoiled by whatever it was that he felt for her that he could not quite bring himself to name.

“Yield!” she demanded. Jaime shook his head. He attacked her again. Harder this time, his blood singing and stinging on his cheek. His right hand hurt. Hurt like it had when they cut it off. When he heard her, tied to the tree, calling his name. Demanding that they not hurt him.

Too late, he had thought, before passing out. Too late. They’ve killed me.

She met his every clumsy thrust with one of her own. She blocked every attempt. She was a stone wall, and he was glad, and he wished that she would pierce him and get it over with. I’m so tired. I’m so tired, and I have wasted all that she has given me.

“You forgot our bath together so easily, Brienne?” he asked. The false mirth sounded false. It sounded like empty bravado. It was. “I told you a tale of wildfire, and I believed you listened.”

“Daenerys is not her father.”

“As I am not mine?”

“You aren’t.” She struck out at him. Her cheeks were wet with tears, now, and he could not say in truth that his own face was dry. What was he? What kind of monster was he? What was he doing?

Dragons, it turned out, sounded every bit like what you would expect them to sound. One roared overhead, and near the back of the Lannister lines, it opened fire. Jaime nearly dropped his sword.

Everyone nearly dropped their swords. The dragon queen’s armies cheered, and they fought harder, but Jaime’s men…

Jaime could not look away. The wings. The fire. The flames took out the wagons at the back, the ones that weren’t already afire from the Dothraki horsemen. Were there people in those wagons? There had been wounded. Camp followers. Were they in those carts? He saw men burn nearby, rolling on the grass, trying to end it. He couldn’t tell if the wagons were full. He followed the dragon with his eyes, and he saw Robb Stark, across the battlefield, doing the same. Robb’s horror looked akin to his own. See? He wanted to ask. Do you see what you have chosen to lay with?

“Jaime. Yield.”

Brienne’s swordpoint was not very far from his throat. He could feel it. He turned and looked at her. She was righteous with the fire burning behind her. Sweat and tears painting her face. Her eyes stared out at him. Blue and beautiful. Her face wasn’t quite as ugly as he remembered. Nothing about her was as ugly as he remembered.

I am the ugliest thing about her.

She was the truest knight he had ever known. A truer knight than he had ever been. He had thought he could be a true knight again, but he fucked it up. He always fucked everything up. Why? For Cersei? Why else. Everything was always for Cersei. Why not the rest of his life? Why not the worst of him? Brienne was the only person he had cared about outside his family in so long, and he was fighting her. For Cersei? Had Cersei earned this kind of blind devotion? Had she earned Brienne’s pain?

He batted Oathkeeper away with his golden hand, but he had forgotten it was Valyrian steel. It cut through the gold fingers like wet paper and lopped them off easier than the knife that took his real hand, and he laughed. He remembered how he had laughed on the bridge that day. Tied up. Still weak. The steel in his hands had been singing to him. The steel in his hands wasn’t singing now. It was humming. Warning, low. Dangerous.

“Jaime, please,” Brienne said. She backed up a few paces. She was still ready to fight him, but she was begging him. “Yield.”

“So your queen can kill me with dragon fire?” he asked. “I killed her father. I’m Cersei’s brother.” She didn’t argue. He raised his sword again. “She won’t give me a good death. Only you can do that.”

She didn’t have a reply for that. She only stared at him. Her mouth was gaping. He attacked her.

She blocked him. She deflected him. They were both tired. Elsewhere on the battlefield, Lannister soldiers were surrendering to the dragon queen. The battle still waged around them, but it wouldn’t for long. Daenerys had landed. He could hear the dragon’s wings as it settled on the ridge above. Brienne kept demanding that he yield.

Yield to be a prisoner again? Yield to be killed by dragonfire? Yield to be sent back as a hostage to Cersei in exchange for something that she likely would not give?

He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back to Cersei like this. Shamed like this. His golden hand had been hewn in half, and yes, that seemed right. He was no longer the man he was. He didn’t want to go back.

He didn’t want to win.

He didn’t particularly want the dragon queen to rule, but he didn’t want Cersei to rule either. He just hadn’t known what else to do. It seemed obvious now, but it had taken him too long.

He blocked another thrust by Brienne that aimed to disarm him. He attacked her in turn. She wasn’t fighting back. If she was, she would have killed him easily.

She won’t even hurt me to defend herself, he realized. His cheek stung. He remembered the fear in her eyes.

I can’t go back.

So many mistakes in his life. The biggest was not dying when they took his hand.

He could have died as the Kingslayer, and there would be no one to miss him. There would be no one to regret his passing. No one to cry for him. He just wished it didn’t have to be her, for her own sake.

For his…well. He had always been selfish. This was what he wanted. Her arms, and the sword they wielded.

She won’t attack me to save herself, he thought. So he blocked her, and he knocked her knees out from under her. He stormed towards Robb Stark. He heard her shouting from behind him. He raised his sword and turned.

Her shout had been a warning. He knew what he was doing. She needed to stop him, but she wouldn’t do it with a sword through his back. She expected him to turn. She expected him to raise his sword and block her blow.

He turned. She thrust her blade with a yell.

Here was where he should block it. Deflect it. Just as he had been doing all his life. Just as he had been doing for this entire battle. He knew it in a detached sort of way. A passing interest. Here is where I would save myself, if I cared to. His sword was half-raised already. An instinct.

He let his arm drop.

The sword pierced his armor easily. Valyrian steel. It was a good sword. He hardly even felt it. Brienne dropped the hilt like it had burned her, and maybe it had. His blood spilled out over it. She had thrust it deep. He grunted. Brienne was pulling off her gloves.

“No,” she said simply. He barely heard it, except that it was the only sound he could hear. The pain was starting. His ears rang. His was weak. The blood continued to rush. He was on his knees, quite suddenly. They hurt, too. Brienne was kneeling with him. One of her hands was on his neck. Gripping, her fingers tight on his skin. Her other hand was on his jaw, and she was forcing him to look up at her. She was saying something. “Jaime, please. Jaime, just…”

“I’m sorry,” he managed. His arm wrapped around hers. His hand gripping the armor at her shoulder. He had given her that armor. He had given her the sword that she had used to kill him. Good. Good. It was what he deserved. “I’m sorry. I wanted it to be you. I’m sorry.”

He sounded weak and wavering like a child, his voice thin. Brienne was crying. Great, ugly sobs, and he pressed his forehead against hers.

“Don’t,” he said. “It isn’t worth it.”

“Jaime,” she said.

“I should have left with you,” he said. “I should never have stayed. I’m sorry.”

It was all coming out. Why hold any of it back? He was dying. Thank all the gods, he was finally dying. Her eyes were closed, and he pulled her closer. He wanted her closer. Her hand moved to the back of his neck. She understood. She brought his head to her shoulder, and he breathed in the smell of her. Sweat and blood. Brienne. Breathing hurt. He could feel the sword in his side. He wanted her to take it out and let the blood flow, but he didn’t tell her to. This was fine.

He was fading.

He was glad he had given her that sword. He was glad it had been her. He hoped she remembered him as he had been on that day: arming her. Sending her to find Sansa and fulfil her oaths. He hoped the passing years would remove the memories of how he’d only ever disappointed her afterward.

“I wasn’t strong enough,” he said. “I’m sorry.” She said something. He could feel her lips moving in his hair as she held him, but he was slipping, and he couldn’t hear her. He could only hear his own heartbeat. Pounding louder and louder in his ears.

Love.

It was too much of an emotion. He wished he had never felt it.

Chapter Text

“That isn’t how that works,” Bran said. He said that a lot, about a lot of things. Each time, it got even more annoying.

“What do you mean that isn’t how that works? You say things all the time about how stuff is inevitable or not inevitable. Surely that means you can tell if something’s a good idea or not.”

“No, I can’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

Bran didn’t ever show his frustration the way he used to, but Arya could sense it on him. Somewhere deep inside. He found her irritating. Good. She wanted him to be annoyed. She was annoyed too.

“It feels like it’s something I’m supposed to do,” she said. “Like it’s the most important thing I’m meant for.”

“That isn’t…”

“How it works? Yeah. Got it. Seven hells, what’s the point of being some kind of mystical truth telling wizard if you’re going to be a mystical truth telling shit about it? The old Bran would have had a lot more fun with this.”

“I am not Bran,” Bran said. It always felt like a lie when he said it, even though Arya didn’t think it was. She’d spent enough time trying to feel him out that she thought the truth was probably a bit more complicated. Like if he wanted to be truly honest, really honest, he would say I am not only Bran.

“Yes you are,” Arya said. Bran frowned at her. “You just need to remember. I never stopped being Arya Stark, either.”

“That was different,” Bran said. But he seemed softer somehow. Which was exactly how Bran would react, even if he didn’t think he was Bran again. He would have liked that she was trying to find him. She couldn’t help but smile at him.

“No it isn’t,” she said. “You just have to come back to yourself. Remember a bit. Like I did.”

Old Bran would have rolled his eyes at that. New Bran probably thought that rolling his eyes was below him, or whatever, but Arya could tell he wanted to.

“You need to wait,” he said. His expression was very sour about it, but he was actually saying something. “Until the time is right.”

Arya seized on that with a savage smile.

“When’s it going to be right?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, but when she glared at him he conceded, “but it can’t be now. Now is too fragile. We need you here for when the Night King comes. Cersei can wait.”

“Cersei can wait as long as she likes. I’m the one who can’t.” Arya paced in front of his wheelchair as he looked at her passively. “Fine. Why do I have to wait? Bran would want to help us, you know. Not just everyone, but his family, especially. He’d want to use his powers to make us understand. Prepare us better for what’s to come.”

Bran sighed that time. A genuine show of annoyance that made Arya laugh. He could say that he wasn’t Bran all he wanted, but she could find Bran beneath the rest.

“You need to wait to kill Cersei Lannister because of her twin,” he said, almost petulant, like she was dragging it out of him. “The Lion of Casterly Rock has died on the Rose Road. Ser Jaime is all that’s left, and we need him in the days to come. In small ways and in bigger ways. If you kill his sister now, we may lose him for good.”

“A real answer,” Arya said. “Was that so hard? A real answer to a real question, and I’ll stay here and kill the queen another time.” Bran sighed again, and she laughed again, too.

She left, flipping the Valyrian steel dagger he had given her a little while back. She wasn’t sure why her brothers were so obsessed with giving her weapons, but she had to wonder if Robb would bring her anything back when he finally made it home. That would be nice. A bow or something. Though because I want him to bring me a present would probably not be enough of a justification to convince Sansa to tell Robb that Arya and Bran were back. Sansa was still afraid for Robb and Brienne, even after all their positive letters about the dragon queen. Arya understood; Sansa had been made to write lies in a letter once too.

And it wasn’t even like Arya needed any other weapons, anyway. Needle was still her favorite, but the dagger was Valyrian steel, and that made it special. She liked to throw it at different targets while the wildlings watched her. Arya quite liked them; they thought she was amazing, and they never said things like you’re quite good for a girl or whatever. Tormund had taken to calling her Little Spitfire, which she liked, because he was never rude or mocking about it. He thought she was fascinating, and he always asked her to teach all the smaller wildling girls how to fight. She liked that. Girls should know how to fight. It was good that he agreed.

Little Fire was what she had called the dagger. Tormund had been pleased about that, and Arya was sure they were friends now. She and Jon and Tormund liked to go hunting together with Ghost, and they liked to eat together at dinners, along with Sansa, and it felt like Tormund had slotted easily into the family. He reminded Arya sometimes of if Uncle Benjen had King Robert’s tendency to laugh at everything.

According to Sansa, Tormund had a crush on Brienne. That made sense. He would have a crush on Brienne. Arya had snorted and said, “seven hells, he’d better hope Lannister stays on the wrong side of the war,” which made Sansa laugh clearer than she had since Arya had been back.

So maybe she still had to wait to kill the queen. Overall, Arya was still feeling quite content with the way things were turning out. She was home, and she was with her family, and even Bran was a bit more like Bran than he had been.

The Hound was crouched in front of the campfire where she’d left him. The Lightning Lord was with him. They’d shown up one day and had both groaned to see her, though Arya knew that The Hound was smiling beneath all that bluster. They’d said something about Thoros telling them they had to come and be ready to join the fight, but Arya hadn’t cared much about that. She’d only cared that she and The Hound had a grudge in common.

“What’d he say?” The Hound asked. Arya twirled her dagger, liking the way it caught and reflected the flames.

“He said it’s not the right time,” she said.

“Not the right time,” The Hound snorted. “Well when is? I’m losing patience, girl.”

“Your brother and the queen will die,” Arya promised. “But we have to wait.”

“First he tells me we have to come here because of the visions. Then you tell me we have to kill my brother and the queen. And now your brother is telling me that I’m sitting up here freezing my ass off in the north for fucking nothing.” Sandor growled and tried to look intimidating while eating his stew. It didn’t work.

“You got to see me and Sansa one more time before you die,” Arya pointed out with a grin. The Hound glared at her and grumbled some more, but he didn’t argue.

Arya moved along. She went back to flipping her dagger. She wondered at Bran’s words about Jaime Lannister and the Rose Road. Who had killed him? And had he died like Jon had? Or was it a metaphor? She probably should have asked. She was so sick of dealing with confusing Bran.

She went looking for her less confusing brother and found him in the stables, helping Tormund and two wildling women lift a heavy beam up so that they could secure it to the ceiling. Jon always seemed lighter when he was doing work like this. Not only because it was the only time he wasn’t wrapped up in that big cloak, but because he was actually smiling and laughing. He was always soft, really. Gentle and kind. But there was something about him that was especially good when he was with the Free Folk.

Cousin, she thought. She was trying to get used to the idea, at least for Sansa’s sake. He’s our cousin. She couldn’t do it. Jon was her brother. It was just different for Sansa, but Sansa didn’t want to hear it. Sansa wanted to beat herself up for it and avoid Jon and make Jon look all anxious and confused every time he asked Arya where Sansa was and tried to pretend not to be worried and hurt about the fact that the answer was always “somewhere else”.

If it wasn’t her own siblings, she wouldn’t have cared. She’d seen lots of odd things on her travels. If Sansa was just some girl she met, what would she have said? She wouldn’t have given half a shit. She would have told the girl do to whatever made her happy, right? That would have been the right thing to tell her. As long as nobody was getting hurt. It was just different because it was her siblings. That was okay, too. Things were weird and different and gross sometimes. That didn’t mean they were bad. Not as long as no one was getting hurt.

People were getting hurt now. Jon and Sansa both acting odd and squirrely around each other. Arya knew it wasn’t her fault, but she blamed herself anyway. Both of them would have been content to carry their secrets to the grave, except Arya had to go and open her mouth and accuse Sansa of lying.

In fairness, she had been convinced that the secret was an easy one: Sansa hating Jon, or at least being jealous of him. That was Sansa. This wasn’t.

Not that she at all understood what this was, anyway. Sansa wouldn’t talk about it. She just got really pale and left the conversation, or got mad and left the conversation, or pretended she hadn’t heard and found some dumb excuse to leave the conversation anyway. Not hard to guess the basics considering how she kept babbling on about Cersei all the time, but Arya wanted...well, she didn’t want details. She thought details would help. There was definitely a difference. 

But Sansa didn’t want to solve the problem. She didn’t want to understand it. She wanted to sing some lovely little song and pretend that everything was fine while she closed herself away. And that was fine if that was what she wanted to do, but she couldn’t keep hurting Jon in the process. Acting all cold and indifferent and making Jon look confused and sad. When she was a little girl still, Arya would have wanted all of Jon’s attention for herself, and she would have been glad if Sansa’s coldness hurt him, because it meant that there was more of him for her. She didn’t feel like that anymore. Not about people. There were things about Sansa that Jon liked and needed, and Arya couldn’t give them to him. Just as there were things about both Sansa and Jon that Arya needed. Separate things that were only from them. Bran, too, even if he was weird.

“I don’t see why it matters,” Sansa had said once, when Arya was asking her why she was avoiding Jon. “He has you and Bran back. He doesn’t need me.”

Arya knew her coldness for an act, though. And she was glad she knew it, because it was convincing. If she hadn’t known it, she wouldn’t have even suspected it, and she might have thought Sansa heartless for it.

Sansa wasn’t heartless. Sansa was terrified. And Arya just wanted to fix it, but everything she did seemed to just make it worse.

Killing Cersei would make it better. She was sure of it.

She waved to Jon to get his attention, and he smiled at her and walked over, looking light and like himself again. He had been seeming more like himself ever since they started getting letters from Robb, talking about how the dragon queen seemed like she might be receptive to helping with the Night King, and how they were already sending shipments of Dragonglass from the mines. The Night King thing…Arya still didn’t understand it. But she knew that it was something that Jon was really worried about, and she trusted Jon beyond anything. She believed him.

“I’m staying,” Arya told him. She knew he would smile, and he did. He had been so against the idea of her going to Kings Landing. Sansa had hesitated and clearly didn’t want to try and tell Arya what to do, but Jon had made no secret about his disapproval.

“Good,” Jon said. “There are a thousand things that could kill Cersei. You don’t need to be the one.”

“I don’t know,” Arya laughed. “No one else has managed it so far. Maybe they need someone to show them how it’s done.”

She already had ideas. Wearing Littlefinger’s face would probably be easiest, because Cersei knew him enough that she’d be curious about what he would have to say. She would let him close enough. Arya had liked the idea of wearing the face of her twin, because Cersei probably trusted him more than anybody if she let him fuck her, but that would make Sansa angry, and Arya didn’t want to do that. She wanted Sansa to be able to sleep at night without nightmares of Cersei coming for her, or sending someone for her, or whatever it was that Sansa dreamed about that made her so scared whenever she said Cersei’s name.

“I know you think it would help Sansa,” Jon said.

“It would,” Arya interrupted. Jon shook his head. This was the only thing about Jon that she didn’t love. He always thought he knew better than her. She hadn’t figured out a way to tell him gently yet, remind him that she wasn’t a little girl just because she was still his little sister. “She’s afraid Cersei’s going to hurt her. Or hurt one of us. It’s a problem I can solve.”

“Arya…” Jon sighed. He looked tired all the time. She wondered if she should tell him that. Sansa wasn’t the only one with demons. Jon’s were just harder to figure out. They were bigger, maybe. Not as easy to kill.

“Not everything can be solved by killing?” she asked, mocking. He laughed.

“Yeah,” he said. “You got it.”

“Not everything can,” Arya said. “But this can. Don’t you want Sansa to be happy?”

Jon sighed again, withering. Arya watched him carefully. She tried not to feel guilty about it. Jon didn’t understand her anymore. He didn’t understand the games she played or the things she could do. She knew that. She used that.

“Of course I do,” he said, and Arya nodded.

Good. He wasn’t lying. At least she could be sure that he wasn’t having a weird crisis.

Chapter Text

Highgarden was beautiful. It seemed especially beautiful after the chaos that they had all endured on the battlefield.

Dany had been on battlefields before. She had smelled the stink of death and she had heard the screams of burned and dying men. She had heard the wailing of women and the high-pitched cries of children. This should have been easier; it was not a village being raided, nor a city being sacked. It was one army facing off against another. It was men fighting men. There had been no children. The only women in the field of battle had been Lady Brienne and herself, and the nurses who came in afterward to care for the wounded.

Still. It lingered on her long after the battle was done. The screams and the flames. The blood and the death. It tainted even this beautiful place with its green gardens and its many-colored flowers and its pretty girls in elaborate dresses who followed Olenna Tyrell everywhere.

It had not, in the end, been a massacre. The Lannister soldiers surrendered after their commander and several lieutenants had fallen in battle.

But it had nearly been a massacre, and Dany for some reason could not put it out of her mind.

The Lannister army, after they had surrendered, they had been so afraid of her. There was power in that fear. Yes, she had thought. Fear me, and put an end to this. Kneel to me and worship me and forget your mad queen.

She had burned the carts as Tyrion had advised. She had not burned the armies. But there were men in those wagons. And women, too. Tyrion didn’t tell her that, but she’d heard the hostage army talking about it. Camp followers. Women who traveled with them and cooked their meals and shared their tents. Bedslaves, it sounded like, but Varys told her that some women just chose to follow armies. There was coin and food and company. And she had burned some of them for it.

She had nearly given the order to Drogon to burn more of them. She had been so angry when she saw that they were still fighting. Some of them had stopped when they saw her dragon, but not enough. The arrogance of men, to think that they could withstand her if she chose to unleash the full might of her children.  

She still wasn’t sure what it was that had stopped her. Perhaps it had only been Tyrion, the agony she could imagine as he stood on the ridge, watching his family’s army fight and die. He was looking for his brother, she knew. Or perhaps it was knowing that her own people were out there, fighting, and that she might burn some of them along with the Lannisters. Or perhaps it was simply that the idea of burning anyone should have turned her stomach, and suddenly it frightened her that it did not. She heard the screams of the burning men and women in those carts, and she remembered how horrified she had been when her khalsar attacked the Lhazareen. There had been smoke and death then, too. She had pitied them. Where had that pity gone? The pity for people less powerful than her own.

What am I doing? The realization had been sudden and complete. Who do they see?

Even though she had stopped herself, the battle was over quickly, and that made the sick feeling inside her even deeper. You see? You did not need to burn them. Just the threat was enough. Just as Tyrion suggested. Most of the rest of the soldiers submitted peacefully, kneeling to her after the battle was done.

After their commander had fallen.

Daenerys watched Lady Brienne now from the window. The warrior woman was in the garden below, speaking with Olenna Tyrell. Olenna laughed at something Brienne said, and Brienne blushed and stammered and looked nothing at all like the woman who had driven her sword into the side of the Kingslayer and then held him and cried as he bled on the battlefield.

“I made the right choice,” Dany said aloud.

“Yes, I think you did,” Varys replied. Dany turned and faced him, sighing. She tried to banish thoughts of the battle, but she had been unsuccessful every day since.

“There is such a thing as too merciful,” she said.

“Yes. There is. But there is also such a thing as just. Finding the balance is a difficult task, but it’s an important one.”

Dany had been surprised by the scene. The Maid of Tarth and The Kingslayer. Like something out of a song that Dany would have loved as a little girl. Brienne had delivered what should have been a killing blow, and then held the man as he died. They were holding each other: Dany had thought at first that the Kingslayer was still fighting, but as Dany followed Tyrion down the ridge, she saw he wasn’t fighting at all. He was pulling himself closer. Pressing his forehead against hers. Trying to hold on to her, too.

“Everyone saw it,” Varys continued. “That the Kingslayer allowed himself to be defeated. They won’t forget that.”

“No,” Dany admitted. She certainly wouldn’t.

She had cried when Drogo was taken from her. She had cried when she lost her baby. When Irri had been killed.

She had cried plenty. She had lost plenty. She had felt loss. She had felt despair. But the sobs of a warrior maiden on the battlefield were difficult to forget, and she knew that the sound of them would linger in the ears of the army for a long while.

“If you had killed him, they never would have forgotten it. And you would have had to kill her, too.”

Varys didn’t say it, but his tone was too pointed to mean anything else: and you would have had to kill Robb Stark to get to them.

She turned away from him, back to the window. Brienne and Olenna were sitting in the shade, close to the window, but it was the northern king on the other side of the garden that drew Dany’s eyes now. He was training with a few of the other men. He laughed loudly at the antics of Brienne’s squire Podrick as the boy trounced a young Dothraki who wanted to learn to fight with a sword. Dany smiled along with him. Robb Stark had that kind of laugh.

“Not to mention Tyrion,” Varys continued, sensing that she was distracted.

“Yes. How is Tyrion? Have you seen him?”

“He seldom leaves his brother’s rooms. Now that Jaime is out of danger, I expect he’ll return to us in short time.”

“I told him he could have all the time he needed.”

“Yes, and I’m sure he appreciates that, but you know him.”

Dany hummed agreement. She looked through the trees around the garden. The smoke had finally all dispersed several days ago. She’d never been scolded before, but Olenna had made her feel like a child when Viserion lit a fire in a glade and wound up burning several acres of wood. She was glad to see it finally put to rights. Olenna Tyrell was a good ally to have, and she was a good hostess as they recovered and regrouped and prepared to head back to Dragonstone, but she was not the sort of person unafraid to show her displeasure.

Robb was showing the young Dothraki how to adjust his stance while using Podrick as a dummy. Podrick said something that made Robb laugh again, throwing his head back. Dany hid her smile this time, but she knew Varys noticed.

“He’s an odd sort of king,” she said to him, without turning around.

“Well, you’re an odd sort of queen.” Varys came to stand beside her, and he watched the same scene she did. “It’s a good match.”

Dany looked at him, and she saw that he was serious. She scoffed.

“You don’t agree?” Varys asked.

“I hate it when you try to sound innocent. You should know it doesn’t work.”

“You’re not the first person to say so. You knew that it might have to happen. You knew it when you left Meereen. When you left Daario Naharis.”

Dany felt a pang to be reminded. She hadn’t loved Daario, truly, though she knew she could have loved him, if she were a different kind of woman.

“Daario,” she started. She stopped herself. She had a habit of saying too much to Tyrion, and she knew she shouldn’t make those same mistakes with Varys. She trusted her advisor, but not as wholly as she did her Hand. She wished again for Jorah, wherever he was. She could have told Jorah anything. “Daario encouraged the worst of my impulses.”

Impossible not to think of Robb, then, and the way he stood between his own bodyguard and her dragon. She hadn’t intended her dragon’s presence to look like a threat, but he knew that, of course. He hadn’t done it to be brave. He hadn’t done it because he thought she would truly give the order to have the Kingslayer and Brienne burned. He had done it because it was his instinct to step between the people he cared for and the things that would hurt them.

“And Robb Stark encouraged mercy on the battlefield,” Varys reminded her.

Yes, he had. There had been men who refused to kneel. Men who chose to die. Men higher up in the Lannister army, mostly. Pride connected them to their choice to serve Cersei Lannister. Men lower in the army had been grateful for the chance to live, but the noblemen... Robb had managed to get through to some of them, but not all. They had chosen death, and so death had been granted, but it had been a gentler death than she had given others who had stood against her. Robb had carried out the sentences himself.

“Most of the Lannister army bent the knee, but there were those that didn’t. I could have burned them. Showed an example. I didn’t. I showed them mercy, instead. Hostages or swift executions. A very public show of mercy. I allowed Tyrion to bring his brother back here. I allowed him to use any means to save him. My father’s killer, and he has been treated like a prince.” She laughed, disbelieving. Robb was demonstrating now to a crowd of five young boys, who had all come to watch. Brienne was beginning to eye them jealously, and Olenna was waving her off. Go, child, Dany could almost hear her saying. Show them how it’s done. I want to watch you trounce those boys. “Tell me, Varys,” Dany said. “Would my father have been merciful?”

“No.” The answer was quick. Dany was unsurprised. “Not at the end, no.”

Robb greeted Brienne happily, clapping her on the back. His smile was so bright.

“I don’t think he was expecting it to work,” she mused.

“Your grace?” Varys asked. Dany turned away from the window. She set her back against it. She remembered Robb panting, his arm bleeding. His face had been stained with soot and blood, and he looked up at her. He had been afraid of her, too. And yet he stood there anyway.

“Robb Stark reminded me,” she said. “That the Kingslayer would make a better political prisoner than a corpse. He did the same for the others. Prisoners. Hostages. They’ll change their minds, he said. They’ll fight for you. Become your army. When I pushed back on the idea, he begged me. He has been nothing but calm and courteous, but he begged me for their lives, or at least for kinder deaths. Men he had just been fighting. Men who are his family’s enemies.”

“He gave you sound advice. Every man you win over is another man against Cersei.”

“And yet again we’re back to it: there’s such a thing as too much mercy.”

Even as she argued, Dany wished that it wasn’t true. But it was. Merciful people were taken advantage of. They were used. They were cut down. The merciless were the ones who survived.

Robb survived, she reminded herself. He could have died, but he didn’t.

She had a memory, only half-formed. Someone was reading her a story from a book. She couldn’t remember who it was. A woman. Not a mother, or a sister, or even a friend. A handmaid, perhaps. Some friend of Illryio. She could hardly remember the woman’s face. She only remembered that the story was sad, and at the end, Dany had cried. The woman had wiped her tears with a silk handkerchief.

“Why did he have to die?” Dany had asked.

“Because he had done so many bad things. He had to die doing something brave, to make amends,” the woman had replied. “He had to die to become a good man.”

“No. That’s stupid,” Dany had cried, and the woman had laughed at her. Kind and gentle.

Not every good man dies. Was it she who said those words? Or had it been the woman? She couldn’t remember. She just remembered them being spoken. Not every good man dies.

Robb was merciful. Robb was kind. Robb was still alive.

But Robb had been betrayed. He had trusted too much. Mercy.

“I couldn’t have killed The Kingslayer without it becoming a problem,” she said. She felt disconnected from the conversation. Disjointed. She knew Varys was worried about her. She had been unsettled since the battle, withdrawn and quiet. Not even Missandei’s presence could soothe her of late. She would close her eyes and think of their fear. His fear. Robb. Standing between she and her father’s killer and begging her to reconsider.

How many people had begged her father for mercy? How many people had stared at her father with terror in their eyes?

“No, you couldn’t have,” Varys agreed. “But he still might die, if he needs to.”

Dany understood what he was saying. She pretended not to notice it. I am not my father.

“Will Cersei try to get him back? When she finds out that he’s a hostage…”

“Jaime Lannister loves his sister beyond all reason,” Varys said thoughtfully. “If the positions were reversed, I would tell you to be wary. He would do anything. Kill anyone he had to. He would not stop until he was sure his sister was safe. But Cersei has never loved anyone as much as she loves power. She won’t give it up for him.”

Dany felt another pang of sympathy for Daario. There were times where she wondered if he hadn’t felt so much more for her than she had for him.

“And his brother?” she asked.

“Tyrion has always worshipped Jaime. If anything happened to him…I don’t know if you would lose him, but you would have to make it blameless.”

Dany shook her head. She could not fail to acknowledge that attempt.

“No,” she said. “The Kingslayer won’t die on my order. I have already given him mercy. I won’t take it back. To be an inconstant queen might be worse than a merciful one.”

“As you say, your grace.”

“When he wakes. Will he be a danger?”

“Perhaps. He gave the Starks some trouble. They resorted to chaining him by the throat in a cage like an animal. I wouldn’t suggest that method this time.”

“Tyrion might object,” Dany said. She remembered the way Jaime Lannister had held to Brienne on the battlefield. She remembered the way Brienne held him. Brienne would probably object, too. “He lost his hand defending Lady Brienne?”

“Yes, your grace.”

“He cares for her. That was obvious.”

“I think so, yes.”

“I want to speak with her,” Dany decided. There were so many questions to which she wanted answers regarding the Kingslayer. She wanted to know how to ensure that he would bend the knee and join the Lannister army to hers. She wanted to know if he would be dangerous. She wanted to know if he was still a slave to his sister, or if his attempted death signaled a larger change of heart. She wanted to know if she could count on him the same way she counted on Tyrion. Lady Brienne seemed like the person who could best answer those questions. It was impossible to extract a straight answer from Tyrion, but Lady Brienne was said to be honorable to a fault, and Daenerys expected she would get closer to the truth with the Maid of Tarth than with her Hand.

“It won’t be easy speaking to her without going through Robb Stark. She’s always guarding him. And he may not be receptive, after...”

The way Robb had looked at her…

She showed mercy. Robb Stark had nothing to complain about. She tried to hold on to that feeling, and let go of the screams from the wagons. She couldn’t.

“She isn’t always with him,” Dany said. She didn’t look back out the window. She hated that she still wanted to.

Chapter Text

She did not expect the queen to be in Jaime’s room.

She hadn’t expected anyone to be in Jaime’s room. She always visited when she knew that no one else was there. Grey Worm had taken to informing her when Tyrion left to get food or attend a strategy meeting too important to miss. In the hall, Robb had seen the quiet gesture from the Unsullied commander, and he had, humiliatingly, dismissed Brienne without a second thought. He didn’t say that she was free to visit Jaime, but he didn’t have to. Everyone knew, Brienne suspected.

She wondered if Daenerys had sent Grey Worm to get her. She supposed it didn’t matter; she would not be surprised by the man’s loyalty to his queen.

Brienne did like Daenerys, and she was grateful to her. Daenerys could have ordered Jaime and the rest of the Lannister army killed. She could have withheld treatment and let him die there on the battlefield, the way he had wanted. Brienne tried to hold on to that grateful feeling so that it was the strongest feeling she felt, but really she was afraid. Saving Jaime had been important to her, and she had somehow done it. But now he was in danger always. Tyrion was by his bed nearly every waking hour, afraid of assassins and the changing whims of the dragon queen. Two Lannister men who knelt early and swore to Daenerys were allowed to guard their commander’s door, though Brienne knew they would not be enough if the queen truly wanted Jaime dead. And when he woke…

He had woken several times already, but never for long, and never in any solid way. If ever he woke when Brienne was beside his bed, he’d apologize and reach for her with his hand or his stump, and she would take whichever was offered. His speech was always slurred and his words confused and often repeated from one visit to the next. Milk of the poppy made him sleepy and pliant, but he never lost a kind of caged look. A hollowness. She would always promise him that she was going to protect him, but she wasn’t sure anything landed with him. He still looked so lost. That terrifying emptiness that she had spied on the battlefield. It was exactly as he’d looked in those weeks after they took his hand and he chose to slowly starve instead of living without it. He would stare at her as he fell back asleep, his eyelids drooping. His eyes would swim with tears. He was weak and helpless and not like himself at all, and she woke sometimes from nightmares about it. Just him, looking at her like that.

Brienne knew what Jaime looked like when he wanted to die, and so she was terrified. The last time she saw it, she goaded him into surviving for revenge, but for what could Jaime possibly want to survive this time? Brienne didn’t know. It wasn’t as easy as it was before. The hand had been an obvious cause, but she found now that she didn’t know enough about what was in Jaime’s mind. What had he lost? What did he want? What would help him? She imagined Tyrion didn’t know any more than she did, and that was why Tyrion looked so like his brother lately. Perhaps it would have been helpful to speak to him about it, but Brienne was afraid to do that. Afraid of what Tyrion would say. Afraid of what he had seen when she held his brother on the battlefield and sobbed. She had spoken to him several times, but always finished the conversation quickly, not wanting to risk his japes or accidental cruelties.

Sometimes she thought it would help. Just to talk to someone who cared for Jaime at all. Robb was sympathetic, and Podrick, too. They cared about what happened to Jaime because she cared about what happened to him, but they didn’t know him the way she did. They wouldn’t mourn him if he died except to feel sorry for her, that she had killed the man she so clearly loved. Tyrion would understand.

She just hadn’t worked up the courage yet. Jaime was the easier of the two to face: he was hardly himself, anyway.

When Brienne entered Jaime’s room, expecting to pass a quick visit in checking on him, seeing with her own eyes that he was still recovering, Daenerys was standing by the window by Jaime’s bed.

She turned over her shoulder and smiled. It was a friendly enough smile, and the sunlight filtering in through the window had the effect of making her look sweet and harmless, but still Brienne was alarmed. She would not soon forget the sight of the dragon on that ridge while she held Jaime on the battlefield. He had been fading quickly, perhaps unaware of the danger. He had been holding on to her arm with as much strength as he could muster. She had found herself in the horrible position of hoping he would die before the queen could make him suffer.

Brienne would not forget that.

“Your grace,” she said. She bowed. She wasn’t sure if any of that was right. She didn’t think she would ever get a handle on addressing the young queen.  

“Lady Brienne,” Daenerys said. She smiled wider. Softer. Brienne knew too much of pleasant smiles and the barbs they could hide. She liked the dragon queen well enough, but she could not trust her in this. “Please, come in. I was hoping to speak to you.”

It wasn’t difficult to guess what she wanted to speak about.

It had been long enough since the battle that Brienne could feel an intense sense of embarrassment for the way she had behaved. It had been a battle. She was a warrior. Ser Jaime had been determined to die. He would not yield.

It should not have surprised her.

She had had time enough to relive the battle a hundred times. Nights enough to wake up gasping, remembering the feeling of her sword sinking into Jaime’s side. Lucky, the healer had said. He’s lucky he took the wound here. The damage is not so bad. But the blood…

Jaime meant to die. He would not think it lucky to have survived. He probably thought it lucky to have found her on the battlefield. To be killed by the one person who would mourn him, remember him, who would not try to make him suffer. He would not have been able to beat her, but he would have been able to block her until they both ran out of energy, but instead he tricked her. Forced her hand.

If she’d had any doubts, they had vanished the moment he apologized, with her sword still sheathed in him.

It had been a foolish trap, and she had fallen into it. She should have realized that Jaime’s charge towards Robb was a feint. He was too good a fighter to pull off in the middle of the battle. He had known that she would never hurt him for her own sake, and that danger to her king would make her sloppy.  

That he had breathed out those apologies after had only made it worse. That he had pressed his forehead to hers only made it haunting. She had mourned him and hated him and held him and cried for him like a much more delicate maiden on the battlefield, and now that days had passed she knew how ridiculous she must have looked. She hadn’t been thinking about it at the time. She hadn’t been thinking about anything. Only Jaime. Now enough time had passed, and it was sadness she felt. Sadness for him, and for Tyrion, and for herself. Sadness for the fact that he didn’t believe himself worthy of surviving. Fear, perhaps, that he would hate her when he woke and found that he had not been granted the death he wanted. But sadness most of all.

She had loved Jaime too long to be able to understand how he could not see the goodness within him, but she knew it, at least. She knew that he likely thought Westeros would be better without him in it. She knew that he thought she would mourn him and then forget him. She knew him. She didn’t know how to help him, though.

The bed he had been given was big and plush. An honored guest’s room, which Olenna Tyrell had plainly been displeased by, though she didn’t argue. He had been tended to by people hand-picked by Tyrion, who watched them all closely. Brienne had avoided his rooms for three days until Tyrion sought her out and apologized for not finding her sooner.

“I saw you,” he said. Kind, at least that first time, though he had been as sarcastic as ever each time she had seen him since. “Everyone saw you. You tried harder to keep him alive than anyone else ever has. Thank you, Brienne.”

After that, it was easier. She still avoided Jaime’s room when Tyrion was in it, but she was drawn to it when it was safe, empty. She checked with the healers as he slept. She made quick visits to reassure herself. She needed it some mornings more than others. Her dreams were still often of him, and they were sharper now that he was so close. Now that she had nearly killed him.

“I don’t know what I can help you with,” she said slowly to Daenerys. She was unused to speaking to queens. She was unused to speaking to beautiful women generally, but queens were a whole other creature. Margaery Tyrell had been pretty and sharp and difficult to read. She had been kind enough, but Brienne always felt like she was so far behind. And Brienne had done passing well with Cersei, though she hardly understood how, now that time had passed and she had become more aware of her feelings for Jaime that would have made that already-awkward conversation even worse. “But I would be happy to try.”

“Sit, please,” Daenerys said, and she gestured to the chair beside the bed where Brienne sat whenever Jaime was awake enough to reach for her. She didn’t usually sit when he was asleep. It wasn’t a purposeful avoidance, but there was something uncomfortable about being so close to him while he wasn’t awake to see her. She glanced at him before returning her eyes to the queen. He looked peaceful in his sleep. Unbelievably. After everything. His face was more heavily bearded than it had been when she saw him at Riverrun last, and his hair had grown longer. More like he looked when they first met. It had grown darker, though, and shot through with gray. It made his skin look pale, and it made him seem shrunken, smaller, with the white sheets pulled up to his bare shoulders. She hated to be so close to him. She still couldn’t understand what she felt. Terror and rage and sadness and a love that frightened her with its strength. The chair was too close to where he lay. It made every feeling stronger.  

She sat anyway, because the queen asked her to, and because Brienne had a feeling that she once again held Jaime’s life in her hands.

Daenerys sat too, in a chair closer to the wall. Brienne felt like Jaime’s guardian, rather than like the one who had put him in this bed.

Your refusal to kill him saved his life, she reminded herself.

He will not thank you for it, she remembered.

Only you can give me that, he had said. A quick death. A good death. She had saved his life instead, and now he lingered, healing slowly, drugged and helpless, in the temporary quarters of the daughter of the king he had killed. She could not let him burn. She would kill him to spare him, wouldn’t she?

“Please,” Daenerys said. “There’s no need to be so formal. Nor so tense. I know how it must seem, me conspiring to speak to you alone. But I have only good intentions.”

She smiled yet again. It was a kind smile, but Cersei’s smiles had seemed kind too, at first. Brienne had never had the talent for immediately discerning falseness. She wasn’t sure if she smiled back. If she even could.

“Of course, your grace,” she said anyway.

“I should have sought you out before now, anyway. I was watching you in the yard, before the battle. You fought Grey Worm and you won.”

“The first few times, yes. He’s very adaptable. He beat me the third.”

“Did he? And the fourth?”

“I adapt quickly as well, your grace.”

Daenerys laughed, and it was young and clear and bright, and Brienne wanted to believe it. She could hear Jaime’s soft breathing beside her. She could remember the way it had slowed, and the way he had sagged against her on the battlefield, his hand still clinging to her arm. She had saved him, and she would not regret it, even if he hated her for it. She could never regret keeping him alive.

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. I’ve seen female warriors in my travels, but never as strong as you. I had worried for you, when you went with Robb Stark to fight. I was concerned that perhaps things would be different on the battlefield. I am only a young girl, and I know nothing of war except what I have seen from a distance, but I know how different it must be from sparring safely in a courtyard. I should have known better. You were stunning to watch.”

“Thank you,” Brienne managed, though she wasn’t sure that was the right thing to say. She had hated every second of it. She had always hated true fighting. She was good at it. She was built for it. She still hated killing. And every man in Lannister armor had worn Ser Jaime’s face until she fought the man for real and had endured what she had prayed she would not.

“You must know that you made an impression. The entire army saw you strike down the Kingslayer. They also saw your regret. It was a powerful image.”

Sansa, if she was here, would know what that meant to Daenerys. A powerful image. It didn’t sound like an overly bad thing, but what kind of image had it been to the dragon queen? Did powerful mean that the queen thought it would help her cause or hurt it? Sansa would know exactly how to respond. Brienne was not Sansa. Was Daenerys angry that Brienne had shown her care for Jaime? Was she touched? Was she just genuinely making conversation? Brienne didn’t know. But her shoulders were high with tension, and she didn’t trust. Her own feelings were so unsettled. She couldn’t devote any energy to interpreting anyone else’s.

“Ser Jaime and I…” she started, but she found any sort of explanation too embarrassing to continue. Bluntness was the answer, as it always seemed to be with her. “He tricked me. He didn’t block an easy strike. I wanted him to yield, but he preferred to die.”

“And yet you would not have me kill him. You shielded him from me when you believed that I would. Even as he tried to tell you to go.”

Had he done that? Brienne didn’t remember that at all. She barely remembered seeing Daenerys there. Just the dragon. It hadn’t even looked real. She remembered that. Remembered the shock of it and the confusion of it, seeing that giant creature so close, but everything else was Jaime. Her hand was on his wound. His blood was tacky on her fingers. His forehead was pressed against her neck. She was keeping him steady.

“Ser Jaime is not the man that everyone says he is,” she managed to say. She brought herself away from that battlefield forcefully. She couldn’t linger.

“He killed my father,” Daenerys said. There was an apology in her voice, like she hadn’t meant to mention it so soon but couldn’t help it.

“Yes,” Brienne admitted. She hesitated. Hovered, her mouth still gaping open. She looked at him. Jaime. Still sleeping in the bed. His head was turned towards her now. He looked peaceful, younger and yet older at the same time. Frail. He had wanted to die, and he had chosen her hand as the one to do it. Yet here she was, still saving him. Forgive me, she thought. “Ser Jaime killed your father in defense of the population of Kings Landing, your grace.” She took a sharp breath, half expecting Jaime’s eyes to fly open in fury, but they didn’t. He was still asleep. Drugged and sated. A thousand miles away. Perhaps in his dreams, he was dead. Perhaps in his dreams, he was with his sister. Brienne looked away from him and found Daenerys watching. She breathed more easily. It was a betrayal, but it was a betrayal she could live with. Forgive me. “Your father planned to ignite the stores of wildfire that he kept beneath the city. He knew that he had lost to the Lannister ambush, and he knew that they were coming. He ordered his men to light the wildfire. Burn them all, he said. Ser Jaime was the only Kingsguard in the throne room. He killed them. Your father and the pyromancers and anyone who would have carried out the order. He killed them, and he saved the lives of everyone who lived in the city.”

“Is that what he told you?” Daenerys asked. Brienne felt her anger mounting. She could not show it.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the story he told me when he was sick from infection after they took his hand. He had no reason to lie. And I believe him. He kept the secret, and he endured his reputation for years. I’ve kept the secret as well.”  

“Why?”

“It wasn’t my secret.”

“Why was it ever a secret? If my father was as mad as people claim…”

“No one would have believed him,” Brienne said. Not that Jaime had said as much, but she understood. “It furthered his father’s goals. It was what his sister would have wanted. What other reason would he need? If he told them, they would have assumed he was trying to save face.

Daenerys gave a half nod and a half shrug, as if to say she would consider it. She looked past Brienne, and Brienne tried not to feel tense as the queen’s eyes lingered on Jaime.

“Tyrion said that his brother never told him why he killed my father. But Tyrion guessed something similar to the story you’ve told. He said that his brother was never the same after he killed Aerys. That there was something different about him.”

“He would know better than I would, your grace,” Brienne said. She sounded desperate, she knew. Desperate to be away from this conversation. Desperate to not take responsibility for knowing Jaime in that way.

“Apparently not,” Daenerys said with amusement. “He told you why. He didn’t tell Tyrion.”

“The circumstances…” Brienne said quietly. Daenerys cut her off.

“He allowed you to cut him down. He tricked you, as you said, into cutting him down. Was he so craven to face execution?”

“It wasn’t,” Brienne started. She simmered. “He isn’t craven. The things he has survived…” She breathed out. She would not look at him. She was showing too much of her heart already. She could see the sympathy on Daenerys’s face when the dragon queen looked at her. Saw her bulky, ugly frame and saw how she must look as she sat beside Jaime’s bed. She wondered yet again what they had looked like as he bled in her arms on that battlefield. Her monstrous form trying to bend itself into womanliness as she held him and sobbed. She loved him. She loved him, and he had been dying, and she hadn’t had time for anything else, but now she did, and she was humiliated. She met the eyes of the dragon queen again, defiant. “He is a good man. He is. He is capable of honor. I know it has eaten away at him that he could not stop his sister sooner. And what she did with wildfire…Ser Jaime could not have supported that.”

“And yet he fought for her.”

“He lost for her,” Brienne insisted. “He could have given me a fight, but he didn’t. He wanted the battle to end. He knew it would end if he fell.”

“Did he tell you that? He spoke to you, after. I remember wondering what he said.

“No, your grace. But I know his thoughts.” Daenerys smiled sadly again, and Brienne took a deeper breath, trying to steady. “I cannot excuse the choices he has lately made, your grace. I have never attempted to. I am sworn to the Starks, and I remain loyal to them. I know that my words are meaningless, but…”

“They aren’t. You’re here because your words have meaning to me,” Daenerys promised. She was so earnest. She leaned in and put her hand delicately on Brienne’s knee. Small and perfect, her nails beautiful and trim. Her eyes were wide with earnestness. She was one of the most beautiful women Brienne had ever seen. What would Ser Jaime see if Brienne looked like Daenerys instead?

“He’s a good man,” Brienne said quietly. “He is. But he has lived his life in service of his family. Of his sister. He has allowed them to blacken everything he touches. I have never…” She swallowed, hating to say it aloud. “I have never seen anyone love with the kind of fervor with which Ser Jaime loves. When he was mad with infection, his sister was all he could speak of. I never knew love to be so powerful that it could destroy a person, but it has destroyed him. He didn’t want Cersei to win. He wanted to die. He wanted to fail her, but he couldn’t let himself betray her.”

He asked me to do it, instead.

Daenerys hummed thoughtfully, and she pulled her hand back with another sympathetic smile.

“My own family…we wed brother and sister for centuries. I used to believe when I was younger that I would marry my own brother. I don’t think I would have loved him. I haven’t heard very many stories of my mother’s love for my father. My own love…even when I lost it, it didn’t destroy me. Perhaps your Ser Jaime is a special kind of man. It’s always women in the stories who are ruined by love.”

She laughed a little, but it was brittle, and Brienne swallowed back her own brittle feelings as well.

“He has done many good and bad things. Like any of us.”

“Not any of us,” Daenerys said with a significant smile for Brienne herself, but Brienne’s words seemed to hit her. She looked at Jaime again, and then she stood. “You’ve said he loves his sister. But that doesn’t stop you from loving him.”

Brienne did laugh, then. She couldn’t help it. Was this her fate? To have every single person she met throw her obvious affections in her face? Jaime had done it when they were about Renly, but he hadn’t made any mention of her obvious regard for him. No, but everyone else in the whole of Westeros had.

Kingslayer’s whore, they called her in the Stark camp when they thought she wasn’t listening. Was it worse because it wasn’t true? Was it worse because she was no one’s whore, just a pathetic pining maiden who yearned after a man who only wanted his sister?

“Forgive me, your grace,” she said. “But I don’t see what that has to do with anything. I am sworn to the Starks, and Ser Jaime stands against them. There is nothing else to say. He loves his sister to ruin. I don’t love him to the same.”

Daenerys was still smiling. She stepped closer. She looked very earnest. She reminded Brienne so much of Catelyn Stark, for a moment. Enough to make Brienne have to look away. She didn’t look anything like Brienne’s former lady. But there was something so sad and so knowing in her expression. Catelyn had guessed Brienne’s regard for Renly, too. Just as Jaime had. Jaime had been mocking and cruel about it, but Catelyn had been so sorry. It had felt worse than Jaime’s jests, in truth.

“That’s why your words matter,” Daenerys said. “I chose on the battlefield to show my father’s murderer the mercy that I did not believe he had shown my father. I chose it because I saw your compassion, and I knew that I would not win your good will if I killed him, and because I knew that the men around you would see your love as well. They know you to be an honorable woman. They know your king to be the same. I wanted to understand your affections for him. I wanted to understand you so that I could feel comfortable asking. When Jaime Lannister wakes, I could put him through a trial. You could be called to give evidence. I could send him back to his sister in exchange for something else that I want. I could keep him here. I would say that it’s up to his behavior, but that’s not entirely true.” Her eyes were boring into Brienne’s now, very serious. “Would you vouch for him, Lady Brienne?”

Brienne looked at Jaime’s sleeping form. He had turned on his side at some point when she wasn’t looking, and she worried about his stitches. His brow was furrowed as if he was in pain. She remembered the feeling of her sword sinking into him. She remembered the way his golden hand caught on the moonlight when he waved to her from the tunnel at Riverrun, letting her escape with Robb Stark and the Blackfish. She remembered his desperation to die, and the way he apologized after, and the way he had seemed so unlike himself as to be another person entirely. Mad with something that she didn’t understand and could only hope to help, in some way, if he let her.

And yet still Jaime, beneath it all. A good man who had struggled and fought and tried. I wasn’t strong enough, he had said. But he wanted to be.

“Yes,” she said. It wasn’t a question at all. “Yes. I would vouch for him gladly.”

Chapter Text

Qyburn was still speaking.

Did the man ever shut up? Couldn’t he see she wasn’t listening? Her eyes were on the box. The messenger had delivered it into Qyburn’s hands, but Qyburn hadn’t opened it. He was too busy explaining the messenger’s presence, as if it wasn’t obvious: another threat from the dragon queen. She had sent messengers before. But not like this.

“Hang him,” she said. “From the battlements. With the others.”

Her men jumped to follow her orders, and she was able to breathe again. Qyburn had stopped speaking. She turned to look at him.

“Give me the box,” she said.

The messenger was shouting threats and promises of fire as he was dragged away. She didn’t listen. He would join the others soon. Spies and other messengers who had dared to threaten her on behalf of whatever idiot sent them. Hopefully this one would be the last. She had grown weary of them long ago, but this…

Her hands did not shake as she took the box from Qyburn. It was a rich, almost black mahogany, inlaid with gold, which felt like an insult. It felt like something Olenna Tyrell would have done. Send it to her with gold, she would have said. Since she’s so bloody fond of the stuff.

Cersei knew what lay inside the box. The messenger had smiled when he said it. But there were things he hadn’t said, and everything hinged on it.

Which hand? Cersei had wanted to scream it in his face, and she wanted to scream it even now that he was gone. Which hand has Daenerys Targaryen sent back to me?

She flipped open the lid to the box, and she swallowed her relief. The golden hand within was in pieces, the fingers sliced off and laid beside it with no attempt to reattach them. But it was gold. All metal. She had to touch it, to be certain. Her own eyes couldn’t be trusted.

Her fingers brushed up against it, cold and unyielding. There were spots of tarnished red. Blood. They hadn’t even bothered to clean it. She touched that, too. It was dried and flaked away easily when she scraped her fingernail along it. Brown from age. The messenger had ridden hard, but not hard enough. It was possible that Jaime was already dead. Wounded, the messenger had said, but he had claimed not to know how badly. By the Maid of Tarth, he had said, too. She was meant to believe that the ridiculous cow had turned on Jaime. Surely that had to be a trap of some kind, a trick to send Cersei scrambling to defeat the north and weaken her position in the capital. What reason would the Maid of Tarth have for attacking Jaime? She had loved him. Unless maybe she finally realized he would never be hers. Women with no hope could be savages about things like that. Cersei knew that well.

She closed the box and thrust it back at Qyburn without looking at him. He took it, like a good Hand, and he kept it close to his chest.

“Your grace,” he said. There was no question in his tone. There were no demands, either. He was the only one she trusted. 

“Jaime is lost to us,” she said. Her voice didn’t shake at all. She remembered the first time she heard he had been taken, years ago, by the Starks. She had wept for him, then. She had wept because she knew that her failures might mean his death. She had wept for frustration because things kept going wrong when this was supposed to make it easier for them to be together. Joffrey, her son, her child, had sneered at her tears as a woman’s weakness, and she had loathed him for only a moment. She had dried her tears and tucked them away inside her, where Joffrey and Tyrion and her father couldn’t see. Myrcella, she had always been sweet. When Joffrey wasn’t around, she had climbed up into Cersei’s lap, though she had been too big by then, and she had mussed Cersei’s dress. She had thrown her arms around her mother’s neck, and she had kissed her on the cheek. Don’t worry, she had whispered into Cersei’s ear. I will cry for him, too.

Cersei had no more tears. Not for Joffrey or sweet Myrcella or innocent Tommen. She had no more tears for Jaime. The Starks would have been kinder jailers than this Daenerys, especially considering what Jaime had done to secure the throne for the Lannisters, all those years ago. No, Jaime was as good as dead. She would not be trapped into trade negotiations, as the messenger suggested. She would not invite the dragon woman to her city to speak about surrender. She was giving Jaime up as dead, and still she did not weep. Why? Where had all her tears for him gone? The dragon queen had him.

No, not the dragon queen. Tyrion. Tyrion had taken him. The dragon queen would have simply killed him, but taking him alive…that had Tyrion’s stamp on it. Even before the messenger said his name as Hand to this child playing at queen, Cersei had known. She warned Jaime, hadn’t she? She told him that Tyrion was coming back. It wasn’t as simple as letting the little imp go and then forgetting. How could Jaime have been so foolish?

“Your grace, perhaps there is a way we could bargain.”

“She demands a full surrender,” Cersei said. She longed to sit down on her throne. She always felt most powerful there. She longed to sit anywhere. She longed to take off this cursed dress and roll naked on her silk sheets. She longed to have Jaime near. She longed for the days when they had to be quiet so they didn’t wake the children in the other rooms. When every moment was a secret. Every stolen second with her love a victory against her father and her husband and all of them for trying to tell her what to be.

“As an opening,” Qyburn suggested. The fool man wasn’t optimistic. He grimaced as he said it. Cersei admired the attempt.

“She wants me to bend the knee,” she said. “She is here to conquer my kingdom and burn me alive. Am I to let her?”

“No. No, of course not, your grace. I wasn’t suggesting that.”

He could see it, couldn’t he? He could see that she was wearing around the edges. Jaime had been the first to notice. Of course he had. He knew what she was like before, when she was better. Lately, she felt as if bits of her were falling away. Shed like her hair when they cut it from her head. Scraped raw off her body like the grime she’d had to scratch at the skin of her arms to remove when they finally released her from that hellish prison and she was allowed to bathe herself once again.

Hewn from her body, like Jaime’s hand.

“Give me that,” she said. She took the box back. Qyburn was looking at her warily again. She turned away. “I need a moment.”

“Of course, your grace,” he said.

He knew. They all knew. He left, bringing most of her men with him. Only Clegane remained behind; he knew she did not consider him when she wanted everyone else to leave. She sat on her throne at last. She had aged a thousand years since she sat here with Tommen on her lap and prepared both of them to die. If only that had been the end of it.

No. Enough of this woman’s weakness. You are queen.

It was her father’s voice she heard, and it was her father’s censure she still feared, even now. She banished that weak-willed wish for rest.

She opened the box again. Jaime’s hand taunted her. He must have fought for her so valiantly. It didn’t matter that he had seemed to hate her when he left. He would have forgotten his baseless anger within days. He would have grown to miss her. That was exactly what had happened to her, and they had always been alike in everything.

She brought the box with her up to her room. She stood on the balcony and looked at it again, his halved hand. She looked at the empty place where the sept once stood. She still could not cry. She wondered how badly Jaime was hurt. He wouldn’t have allowed himself to be taken unless he was hurt. Even without his best hand, he would have kept fighting. How long had he lasted in the battle he had fought for her? How much pain had he been in? Was he in pain now?

She found it difficult to imagine what he would have looked like, desperate to win her war on that battlefield. It was easier to remember him as was when they were children, when their love had been uncomplicated and true. Their kisses innocent of any hatred. Their caresses filled with want and devoid of anything sharper than growing curiosity. She had kissed him, and he had kissed her back, and then they were one. It was meant to be forever. They were divine, once. What had they become?

Their boy. Their child. She had driven him to that. She had blown up his precious wife and blown up his precious sept, and she had driven him to it.

What had she done?

No. She closed the box. She went back into her room. She set the box on her bed. She paced to the window. She longed to open her dress, loosen the armor she wore everywhere, but she didn’t dare. She could hear the creaking footsteps of Clegane as he settled against the door outside. I am safe. She wasn’t, but she wanted to be. She would be. She would prove it to herself. Her fingers hesitated at her collar, but not for long. She pulled at the clasps and tore at the stays. She stripped the dress from her limbs, tearing it apart. The leatherwork tore slowly. The hooks and laces were threaded on too tightly. She bit back screams of frustration. When it was done, she was in her smallclothes and shivering. It had gotten colder. Those maudlin Stark words were finally coming true. Something else for them to feel so fucking righteous about.

Her hands shook as she poured herself a glass of wine. The box haunted her from where it sat. She didn’t look at it. Was it anything like how it had been in the Stark camp? He had told her so little about that. She had always wondered. Perhaps she should have asked. But he had taken too long, and when he came back, she found herself hating him more than she had once loved him, and the love had never grown back right. Was he locked up somewhere in chains? Was he cold? Were they even feeding him? She thought of her own Black Cells. She thought of the screams she did not allow herself to hear when she got too close to them. No. No. Olenna Tyrell would never…would she? She wished…

No. It was too late for wishes. She drank her wine. She longed to crawl under the covers. Jaime would have crawled in beside her. They were just children. He would have wound her hair around his finger, making the curl bounce free as he tugged it. He would have kissed her hand. A boy playing at knighthood. Her heart would have fluttered. Where had that gone?

She was safe. Clegane was outside. She was safe.

Dragons could scale walls. Even The Mountain would fall to a dragon queen. She would not be safe beneath her covers. Jaime was gone again. The last time Jaime was gone, he was gone for so long that everything went sour, and when he came back…

He isn’t my Jaime. My Jaime is dead. This is a man in a mask, pretending.

She had had the thought so many times.

She picked up the box. She would cast it into the fire. She would melt his golden hand. She would not kneel to the dragon queen. Jaime would not want her to. He would want her to be strong.

Yes. Jaime would want her to be strong. Jaime and their father, too. They would not want her to kneel. Think of your pride, they would say.

Jaime would…

You can’t win this, he would say. Look around you. Look at our enemies. You can’t win.

He was always saying things like that now, wasn’t he? No. No, he wouldn’t. He would understand. Her Jaime always understood her mind. He would know.

He had looked at her with such disgust.

Not Jaime. Jaime loved her.

Such disdain.

She was remembering wrong again. Jaime never…

And Tywin…he would be proud of her, too. He would understand what she was doing. The legacy she was protecting.

What legacy? Jaime would ask. It’s just you and me now. Our children are dead.

She should have insisted they try harder for a child. She didn’t have many years left of childbearing. There wasn’t time. Jaime couldn’t be away from her for another year. Not again. She should have had more when there was a chance. Why had she stopped at Tommen? Why had she not started before Joffrey? Their legacy.

Their legacy. What legacy? Jaime was right. There was nothing. An empty keep. Terrified people in the streets. She was guarded by a monster. She was surrounded by monsters. Nipping at her heels. Waiting for her to fall so they could take her place. They all knew, didn’t they? They knew that she was balancing. When she fell…

She would not fall.

I will not fall.

She could hear the crows outside, feasting on the men she had left hanging there. Good. Pluck out their eyes. Let her see them when she comes to take my crown. She should not have demanded anything from me. She’s a child.

Jaime. She has Jaime.

A crow feasting on Jaime’s eyes. Tearing his cheek with its twisted beak.

No.

Her dress was too tight. She went to tear it off. But she had already done that. It was her chest that was tight, and she sank into her chair and sobbed. No. No, you can’t afford tears. You can’t be weak. You can’t be so foolish. You…

Jaime. I want Jaime. I want him here. I want my children. I want my father.

Mother. I want mother, too. I was there when they needed me. I did what they asked of me. I gave my husband my body. I tried to give him my heart. He didn’t want it. None of them did.

Only Jaime.

It was too much. It was too much for any one person to shoulder alone, but they had all left her here. Everyone she had ever loved, and she was the one who remained. She should have been glad of it, but how could she? What was it all for?

For myself. For me. Finally, for what I want.

Was this what Aerys felt?

Was this what he felt when he saw the rebels gaining footholds? Did he realize that he had no one left who loved him? He was a mad old man, and what am I becoming? A mad woman, old before her time. Three dead children. My husband is dead. My true husband lost to me. Jaime. Jaime, please. I need you. Come back to me.

She had turned to see him in the doorway when he came back. His golden hair gone brown and gray. The dirt and smell of him. That awful stump. Hideous. I should have kissed him. Maybe he wouldn’t have left if I had kissed him.

You forget. You beautiful fool. I didn’t leave. You sent me away.

She had stopped crying, but the tears still leaked from her eyes. She kept wiping at them, furious. She should not cry. They should not see her like this.

Was this what Aerys felt? Did he worry what people saw? Did he feel strong when he sat on his throne? Did he feel weak in his rooms afterward? Did he ever cry?

No. No, he hadn’t. She knew that. She shouldn’t cry, either.

If Jaime stood in that doorway now, in the way he did then. What would he see? Would he see a madwoman?

Aerys had trusted him, too. The young, golden lion with his glittering smile and his clear, bright eyes. Not yet so sharp. Not yet so hard. He had been little more than a boy. She had always hoped that Joffrey would grow to be like him. Jaime jousted and fought and laughed, and every maiden wanted him, and his eyes only lingered on her. Power before she knew what power was. Power before she had any. Every kiss, she took what he offered her. Here, sister, he said. Take some of it. It’s yours. She had wanted all of it, and she had taken.

What had driven Jaime at last? He never told her. She never asked. What were the dragon king's last moments like? Had he raved? Begged? Had Jaime stood impassively over his king and built up his determination? He had been so young. How had he done it? How had he found the will? Jaime never was strong like that. How had he done it?

Would he find that strength again?

Would she be too mad for him to stomach?

Would he stand above her with his sword? Would he look down at her on the throne? Would he say a single word before he drove the blade through her back?

No. She stood. She crossed to the balcony. No. Jaime wouldn’t kill her. She wouldn’t give him the chance.

What match would a one-handed man be against The Mountain?

And he wasn’t here, anyway. He had gotten himself captured. He had failed her, the way everyone else had. She had nothing to worry about anymore. Not from him. Jaime was gone. He was as good as dead. He had killed the dragon queen’s father, and so Daenerys Targaryen would burn him, and Cersei would not think of that. She would not think of him at all.

She would tell Qyburn to order the pyromancers to step up Wildfire production. She had more than enough left over for the Keep, but she wanted more. She wanted as much as they could give her. She wanted the entire city filled with it. Dripping green and beautiful. The walls of her keep couldn’t keep her safe from dragons, but if the worst came, if the dragon queen did not give up her foolish quest, Cersei would make sure that the taste of victory turned to ashes in her mouth.

Chapter Text

They had known of the outcome of the battle for more than a week, thanks to Bran’s powers and thanks to Robb’s initial letters, but those letters were short, spare things, and Bran had given them few important details. They knew that Robb and Brienne and Davos were all alive and mostly unhurt. They knew that Daenerys had been pleased with Robb’s choice to fight, but that their forming friendship had been strained in the aftermath. They knew that Brienne had nearly killed the Kingslayer, and that he had allowed her to do it rather than yield. They knew that Highgarden had been protected, and that the bulk of the Lannister army was split now into two fairly even camps. Half of them were hostages. Half had joined the dragon queen willingly. And many of the hostages, Robb had written, were waiting for Jaime Lannister to be well enough to choose for himself; they would follow their commander.

Sansa had worried about the growing power of the Targaryen army and what it meant for Robb and Brienne, trapped there practically alone and largely undefended, but she seemed in better spirits that morning when she came into the office they had been sharing since Robb left.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Letters from Robb and Brienne,” she said. She handed them over to him. She was smiling, and she looked easier than she had looked in days. He was relieved. There was so little she would allow him to help with. Jon had taken on the bulk of physical preparations, helping his men fortify Winterfell and dig trenches and keep a running inventory of everything. But there was really only so much of that kind of work to do, and everything else seemed to be piling up as Sansa tried to sift through it on her own. “Negotiations are going well.”

“That’s good, Sansa,” he said. She met his eyes and grinned a little, and he actually saw the moment she remembered to avert her gaze and look away. He tried not to sigh. He wasn’t successful. Arya insisted Sansa wasn’t angry with him, but Jon was used to feeling guilty for just about everything. It was easy enough to start to feel guilty about this, too. He wasn’t sure what he had done, what he had said. He had been so careful to act normal around her, but lately…

He focused his attention back on the letters, desperate for something to talk to her about. She was still here, waiting for him to finish. Usually she ducked out as soon as she had delivered whatever messages she had come to deliver in the first place.

Brienne’s letter was rather short. It was obvious that Sansa had asked her for more details, because there were some attempts at expanding on some information, but they weren’t very good ones. It felt very Brienne, and Jon nearly laughed, but found he couldn’t. He felt sorry for her, really. Fighting someone she plainly cared for. It was a horrible feeling, and Jon hadn’t even been the one to kill Ygritte. He could imagine what Brienne must have felt when she thought she had killed the Kingslayer.

None of it showed in her letter, of course. She wrote a dry, soldier’s account of the battle, and only Robb’s letter hinted at her distress, and the fact that she had yet to go back to Jaime Lannister’s rooms now that the Kingslayer was out of danger and awake again. Robb’s letter was self-deprecating and full of mirth about his own battle. Pretending at bravado for Sansa’s sake, as if she hadn’t seen the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Bastards. As if she didn’t know what kind of hell war could be.

Jon looked up to watch her as she wrote at her desk across the room. She was sitting right by the window, and she wrote the way she did everything else: as if it was the most important thing in the world. Her whole attention on one task. Maybe that was why it had happened, those awful longings that had driven them apart. He had fallen for the intensity of her focus when she treated him that way. Like he was so important. Maybe he was just that simple. Maybe it was just that easy for him to turn something that was innocent into something that was warped and twisted. Maybe it wasn’t as he originally feared.

Coming back wrong. Coming back to life as something broken was the easiest explanation. It was the only one that made sense. What else would have caused it? Some terrifying magic brought him back to life, and he still wasn’t sure why. Why him? Why, out of everyone alive? The red woman wanted him to believe that he had a bigger part to play, but she’d said the same thing about Stannis once, and Stannis was dead.

Still, there was no denying that her magic had worked. Her magic or the magic of the god she believed in. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand any of it. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with it until Sansa arrived at Castle Black and persuaded him to fight.

Was it any wonder he blamed his resurrection? It was an easy thing to blame. When he breathed again after dying, everything was sharper. Harder. More bitter. But Sansa wasn’t. When he saw her again for the first time since they were children, she was the softest thing he had seen in years. Soft and scared and looking at him like she didn’t know what to expect but desperately hoped it was the brother she remembered. He didn’t care about the red woman's claims of his greater purpose. But when Sansa pushed him to try and win back their home, he found that he cared about that. That could be his purpose.

He wanted her close when she was only his sister, and he wanted her still closer when Robb revealed him as cousin, though it changed nothing in truth. They had believed each other to be siblings for their whole childhood. If things had been different, if he had grown up in the Red Keep, Rhaegar’s son, they might have even been matched. But he had been her bastard half-brother once, and though she loved him better now than she had before, her bastard half-brother was all he would ever be. At least when he blamed the red woman’s magic, he was blaming something other than himself.

But then Arya came back, and Jon realized that his unnatural wants weren’t from magic at all. Arya was his sister. He loved her the same as he always had. She was the little girl who ignored her mother’s wishes and who always wanted to play with her brothers. She scoffed at the possibility that him being their cousin would mean that anything should change. She had kept Needle for all this time out of love for him, and he loved her the same. It was a relief, and it was something he needed, but it took away from him the explanation that would have saved him the most grief.

If it wasn’t the red woman’s magic, it was just him. Just Jon Snow.

Sam had actually made a joke about it. He had arrived at Winterfell one day, unannounced, with Gilly and Little Sam in tow. He’d brought books from the Citadel, and he had scarcely been at Winterfell for ten minutes before he was asking for a private audience so he could speak to Jon about something. He had spread the book out on the table in front of them in the empty library, his voice whispered low. He talked about Jon's parents. Jon’s parents, and their wedding.

“Gilly found it,” he said. “Isn’t it brilliant? You have a claim to the throne.”

Jon shook his head.

“I’ve never wanted any throne,” he said.

“Well I’m not saying you have to take it! But still! You’re a prince. A proper prince.”

“I’m a Targaryen,” Jon said. The words tasted bitter on his tongue. “And the Targaryens were overthrown. That’s all I am. You’d better not start calling me your grace. I’ll send you back to the wall if you do.”

“You wouldn’t,” Sam said with a chirpy smile. “Because then I’d tell everyone you’re a prince and it would be madness. You’d have people fawning all over you. Trying to convince you to take the crown. You’d hate it.”

“You can’t tell anyone about this, Sam,” Jon reminded him, though he could not help but smile at his friend.

“I won’t. I wouldn’t.  Well, I talked to Bran about it, but Bran already knew.”

“I wonder why he didn’t tell me,” Jon mused.

“Oh, because it’s not important yet,” Sam said blithely. “That’s what he told me, anyway. He’s fascinating, isn’t he?”

“That’s one word for it.”

“He said you don’t want to be king anyway.”

“He’s right.”

“He says that you’ll always be a Stark, too.”

Jon had looked at him then, and he saw Sam's soft, reassuring smile.

“I’m a Snow,” he said.

“You’d be a Sand, technically. Born in Dorne and all, right? And you’re not a bastard anyway, so you wouldn’t be either. You’re a Targaryen, but you’ll always be a Stark. That’s what Bran said, and he’s right. Which is good news for your sisters, I guess.” He laughed at his own joke, and Jon looked at him quizzically. The laughter died, and Sam stammered out, “you know. Because Targaryens married their sisters? That’s all I was saying.”

Jon had forced a laugh that likely sounded fake, and then he had moved them away to other things, but still it lingered. It hardly seemed possible, but was that it? He knew it likely had nothing to do with blood. People said bastards had unnatural lusts and wants because of how they had been made, but he never thought that was true. And the Lannister twins weren’t Targaryens, and they didn’t need to be to want each other. But maybe that was it. Maybe it was just his blood, disregarding the laws of men and telling his body and mind that it was all right to want the woman who had once been his sister.

Sansa’s head was bent over the letter she was writing. She was smiling faintly. The sunlight was in her hair. Red and shimmering. He’d tried to tell himself a few times that red hair was all it was. Ygritte had had red hair, too. But they were nothing alike, and Sansa had a softness that he had more than once wished for in his Wildling lover.

She looked up and caught his eyes, and he smiled.

“I was just thinking of Brienne,” he said. “Perhaps it would have been better if she’d stayed. I could have gone with Robb instead.”

Sansa frowned at him. He couldn’t seem to say anything right to her, of late. Everything made her frown or look away.

“You’d have killed him,” she finally said. “Brienne wouldn’t have been very happy about that.”

“No, I suppose not.” He looked back down at the letters as if there was more to read, but Sansa was watching him still. He could feel it.

“He loves her too, you know,” she said finally. When Jon looked up, she was smiling. It was a mischievous little smile. A grin. “She doesn’t think he does, but he does. I don’t even know if he knows it.” She took a deep breath. Bracing for something. “I’ve been writing to him. Since not long after Robb got back.”

It took a few moments for those words to sink in. And then, when they did, he couldn’t figure out why she had spoken them.

“Jaime Lannister,” he said. “The Kingslayer.”

Sansa winced and looked chagrined.

“Um,” she said. “Yes.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. It started out all right. We were just being mean back and forth. That seemed appropriate. But.” She shook her head. “Bran told me some things. And Jaime and I wrote about some things. And then he was hurt, and I found I was. Well.”

“Upset,” Jon finished. “Because Jaime Lannister was hurt.”

“Yes,” Sansa admitted.

“Is that who you’re writing now?”

“Yes.”

Jon found himself laughing. He wasn’t sure why. She looked so guilty about it, as if it was this shameful secret. Really, it just seemed so…Sansa. To write to someone with the intention of remaining enemies with them and to wind up becoming friends instead. It was almost a relief. Sansa seemed so brittle sometimes. So removed from the girl he remembered. He liked to have reminders like that that she hadn’t changed completely. She was still Sansa. He still knew her.

Knew her. Loved her. It was the same thing, wasn’t it? Sansa was made to be loved. She was made for people to care for her. She was more capable than she used to be, and he knew that she could take care of herself. But she had a way about her. It made people want to defend her. Brienne. Theon. Arya. Jon. He wasn’t the only one.

He wasn’t the only one. He needed to remember that. It wasn’t odd. It wasn’t strange. He was just reading it wrong.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked, exasperated. She was trying not to smile. “It isn’t funny. I thought you would be angry.”

“Why would I be angry? It’s…” Adorable came to mind, but he wouldn’t say that. “It’s not like it’s Cersei Lannister. If the two of you want to write letters back and forth about how much you love Brienne, I don’t see that there’s anything to be sorry for. I trust you. I know you aren’t writing him any secrets about our defenses or, I don’t know, the number of men in our armies. You’re too clever for that.”

Sansa smiled a little. She shrugged and looked back down.

“Well,” she said. “Maybe. It still feels weird.”

Yes, lots of things felt weird. There were dragons again. There were red priestesses who brought people back to life. There were mad queens blowing up septs with wildfire.

“You have a good heart,” he told her. She looked startled, her eyes wide on him. He didn’t want to just leave it there, but he was almost too taken aback by his own words to speak again. He finished, “I’m not surprised that you found common cause with someone you thought you should hate.”

Her smile grew. Surprised and pleased. Her cheeks colored. He looked away before he got too hung up on it.

“Sometimes it’s not such a good thing,” Sansa admitted. She left her letter to dry and walked over to take the pages back from him. He gave them gladly.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Trusting people,” Sansa said. She handed him another letter from her desk. He scanned it quickly.

“Olenna Tyrell,” he said.

“I haven’t figured out how to reply to it yet,” Sansa admitted. “She and her granddaughter were kind to me when I was trapped in Kings Landing. I thought for a time that they would help me escape. I still don’t know what would have happened if the Lannisters hadn’t married me to Tyrion. I was meant to marry Loras. Go to Highgarden. Be safe. Now I have to wonder how much of their kindness was because they wanted to use me. Olenna Tyrell is a clever woman. She’s also a woman with cause to want revenge against Cersei. It’s a kind letter. Long, and filled with sorrow. It’s also the first time she has reached out to me since Kings Landing. And conveniently, I’m in more of a position to offer her whatever it is she wants. I don’t know what to believe.”

“What does she want?”

“I don’t know yet. She wants an answer, first. She probably expects a polite, empty-headed reply. I was still so stupid when she knew me. I doubt she expects me to have changed so much. Once I send her that, then it’ll come to what she wants from me. I don’t think she has any more sons or grandsons she might want to marry me off to. Nor any daughters or granddaughters for you or Robb. I can’t imagine she wants us to agree to shelter her here. It seems she means to stay in Highgarden until Cersei arrives personally to kill her.”

“Suppose I’d rather be killed by Cersei than the Night King,” Jon said. Sansa exhaled a soft, gentle laugh.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’d like to see them try and kill each other.”

“Aye. That would be a good way to handle most of our problems at once.”

“She might want Littlefinger’s help,” Sansa mused. Jon tried not to smile as he watched her puzzle through it. He had missed this. This was what it had been like almost every night after they took Winterfell back. Sansa seemed to like the simplicity of thinking aloud. It was the freedom of it, he thought. She knew she could trust him. She could say anything. He wondered if this meant that she was beginning to trust him again. He wondered why she had ever stopped.

“If she wanted Littlefinger, she’d have written to Littlefinger,” he pointed out. “And Arya would have told you.”

“Maybe,” she said. She still seemed unsettled. “It’s…difficult to tell. That’s one thing I envy in Arya.” She smiled at him. Exhausted and scared and beautiful. He couldn’t look away from her.

“What, not the faces?” he asked. She laughed helplessly, ducking her head. What was wrong with him?

“No,” Sansa said. “I could do without the faces.  But she can always tell when people are lying. She can always tell when I’m lying, and I’ve been told I’m rather good at it. That would be quite a skill to have. I would be able to look Olenna Tyrell in the face, and within a few words I would be able to tell you if she was honest. If her intentions were good. Gods, it would have been such a help for me with Cersei. And with Littlefinger.”

“You wouldn’t need Arya’s skill to help with Littlefinger,” Jon pointed out. “He was always lying.” Sansa laughed at that, as well.

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “But anyone else.”

“Not anyone else.” She looked at him, waiting for the joke. “Not me. You know I’m never lying to you.”

It wasn’t a joke at all. Her eyes opened wider. But she was smiling.

“Of course not,” she said. She hesitated, but then she reached over and squeezed his arm. Her eyes were bright. She was clearly touched. She was touched, and he was horrible. He smiled at her anyway. She didn’t have to know that he was horrible. He could just be horrible quietly, loathing himself all the while.

Sansa finally left, folding her letter to Jaime Lannister, looking lighter now that she had shed this secret that had apparently been bothering her. Jon wished that he could unburden himself without ruining everything and making her feel a thousand times worse.

Maybe it wasn’t that he came back wrong. Maybe it wasn’t anything as dark as that. It wasn’t just want. That was only part of the problem. It was something else, too. Something softer. Maybe it wasn’t the red woman’s magic, or him being broken. Maybe it was just that he had never known Sansa before, and meeting her again was like meeting an entirely new person. That was all it was. He would be able to get rid of this horrible part of him eventually.

Chapter Text

Days passed in Winterfell after the battle at Highgarden, and Sansa worried. She worried for Robb and Brienne and Davos, so far away from her. They had captured a big part of Cersei’s army. They had captured Cersei’s brother. They were pleased with their victories, but Sansa knew Cersei better than they did, and she could not believe that they were safe. Three dragons or no dragons. Armies or no armies. No one was safe with Cersei on the throne.

She worried, too, about Jaime. Tyrion’s last letter said that Jaime was awake but “not doing well”, whatever that meant. Jaime hadn’t replied to her first attempt at a letter, and she didn’t particularly feel like revealing their friendship to Tyrion of all people, so she didn’t bother asking for clarification. Her second letter to Jaime would be much more sternly worded than the first. Now that Jon and Arya and, obviously, Bran all knew about the letters, she felt less odd about it. Jon hadn’t been angry at all. Jon had been amused, and fond, and it still made her stomach squirm pleasantly to think about it.

Robb's letters were almost always about his efforts to win the dragon queen’s help against the dead, though Jon worried that he wasn’t moving fast enough. It seemed from his letters that Robb was spending most of his time working with Olenna Tyrell and her people to prepare to evacuate Highgarden to Dragonstone; apparently, the Tyrell matriarch had been convinced to abandon her home. They were taking the food stores with them so that Cersei couldn’t send her remaining armies to loot it afterwards. Sansa had little hope that any of the food would eventually find its way North as part of negotiations; the food would probably not travel well, and the dragon queen’s force was large. They would consume a lot of it on their journey, and more of it when they were back at Dragonstone.

The Blackfish in the Vale had taken full control of the lords, and he once again had Robert Arryn in hand. Sansa had to pity him for that, but he was a firm man; if anyone could keep Sweetrobin in line, it was him. And the Vale had food, and they were willing to trade for it. The north would not starve.

The north will not starve, and you are safe. Littlefinger is dead, and you are safe. Arya and Jon and Bran are with you, and you are safe.

Again and again until she could believe it.

Jon’s friend Sam arrived one day with books and a pretty girl named Gilly, along with a little boy that he had claimed as his own. Jon had told lots of stories about Sam, and it was exciting to meet him in person. He was nice, too, and stumbled over his words in a way that made Sansa feel safe. She’d had enough of silver tongues and unmet promises. She liked how genuine he was.

She liked how Jon seemed around him, too. He seemed more full, more whole. Sansa watched them from a distance as Jon played with little Sam and laughed at big Sam and spoke politely and kindly to Gilly. She kept herself hidden in the shade on the walk above, drinking it in.

Jon was happy. He was with his friends. Not everything had been so horrible for him at the Wall.

It made her heart swell to see it, to know that he had been cared for, that he’d had people who cared about him in those long years when she’d thought about him too rarely. He had people who loved him. She was so glad. She knew he’d had a lover, a wildling woman north of the wall, and that the woman had died. She hadn’t counted on friends, too. She liked it. She remembered Shae. Could a handmaiden be a friend? Could that ever be a true friendship?

“Bran wants to speak to us,” Arya said suddenly, beside her. Dressed as Littlefinger again. Sansa didn’t look at her. She closed her eyes. She felt the wind on her face. There was a cold northern chill coming in. Perhaps Sam should have stayed in the south, no matter how important it was that he come here to tell Jon whatever it was that he had to tell him. The north wouldn’t be safe for long. Bran didn’t ask to speak to all of them for no reason.

They met in the godswood, because it was easiest to make sure that they weren’t watched there. Not that they needed those assurances; Bran always knew when people were listening to them.

His skills, much like Arya’s, would have been useful in Kings Landing. Sansa was a bit envious about it. Why hadn’t she been granted some helpful power? Maybe things would have been easier if she had been more than just Sansa.  

Then again, from their stories, things hadn’t been easier for Arya and Bran at all. They had all lived through so much, and they were so different now. That they had all survived was a miracle in itself.

Sam arrived to the godswood with Jon, both of them bundled up in their cloaks. Sam smiled at her in greeting, his cheeks round and rosy, and Sansa couldn’t help but smile back. He had seemed a bit afraid of her when they first met. It made her wonder what Jon had told him about her. Sansa: the sister who had been cruel to him when they were children. But only a few days had done away with most of his fear. Sam was an easy person to like, and he was a person who liked easily.

Bran watched them all as they gathered, with the unsettling stare that Sansa hated but would not avoid. She never wanted Bran to notice how uncomfortable he made her. Foolish, of course: how could he not notice? And he didn’t seem to care, either. He didn’t care when Arya snapped at him. He didn’t care when Jon pleaded with him. He didn’t care about anything anymore, did he? Sometimes, Sansa wondered if he felt like she did. Scraped hollow inside, like there was nothing left of him. She never asked. She wanted to pretend she wasn’t afraid. She wanted him to think that she was still the big sister who would chide him playfully and read him stories when he was sick.

When Bran was ready to speak, he simply spoke. There was no prelude. No introduction. No greeting. Just sharp efficiency in his dreamy, unfocused voice. Its monotone was unsettling, unwavering. 

“The Wall will fall soon,” he said.

“That’s impossible,” Sam replied. Of everyone, he seemed most comfortable around Bran, and it gladdened Sansa’s heart that someone could treat him normally. Perhaps it was easier for Sam because he hadn’t known Bran very well before, or perhaps Sam was simply better at being polite about it than the rest of them.

“It isn’t impossible,” Bran said.

“Is there any way to stop it?” Jon asked.

“No. This was always going to happen. There was only delaying it, and it has been delayed as long as it can. We will have little time to prepare, but we will have time. The Night King moves slowly with his army. If you rode out to meet him now, you would be killed, and he would win. The Wall must fall, and we must meet him outside the walls of Winterfell, and we must destroy him here. It is the only way to end the cycle.”

“Simple enough,” Arya said. Back as herself again, she looked somehow more intimidating than Litttlefinger.

“It won’t be simple,” Bran said. He didn’t sound annoyed, but Arya grinned over at Sansa anyway, as if she had annoyed him, and it made Sansa smile despite herself.

“What do we have to do, Bran?” she asked. Bran turned to look at her.

“We need dragonfire,” he said. “Dragonglass.”

“Oh, seven hells,” Arya muttered. “Of course.”

“We need armies from every corner of Westeros. We need food for the winter ahead. We need furs, and we need fire. Wood and stone. Valyrian steel. We need Ice.”

“He’s fucking with us,” Arya said.

“I’m not.”

“Then why’re you trying to sound all grave and mysterious like that?”

“Arya,” Jon and Sansa warned together. Arya threw her hands up.

“He’s messing with us!” she insisted.

“I’m not,” Bran said. His voice was strained. Sansa had to stifle the urge to laugh. Arya didn’t bother.

“You are! It’s like a story. The hero has to gather all this shit and then the clever wizard tells them how to use all of it to defeat the enemy in clever ways. It’s an Old Nan story!”

“Bran,” Jon sighed, ignoring Arya’s annoyed outburst. “We can’t get all of Westeros to fight in this war. Even if they could get here in time, there won’t be any convincing them. People don’t believe the threat is real. The only threat they know is other men, and those are the wars they’ll fight.”

“They will get here in time,” Bran said. “And we need to be ready when they do. The dragonglass is already on its way. Food and furs. And people will come if you ask.” He smiled a little, and there was something more of Bran in his expression then. “You don’t have to convince all of them. You just have to convince her.”

Sam and Jon stayed with Bran afterward to talk some more, but Sansa and Arya walked back towards the castle together. She would write to her uncle Brynden immediately. She would speak to Yohn Royce as well. The Vale would send more men with their food. The glass gardens were producing well, and Tormund had taken to his role as the head of the hunters. He and his people ranged out every few days. Game was scarce, but not so scarce that they were in danger of starving anytime soon. And there would be hides and pelts enough to secure more furs for the men who would be arriving to fight…

Sansa didn’t think of the fighting that was to come. She could do nothing about that, and thinking of it would only bring her back to the Blackwater, and the terror of that night. She would only focus on the things she could control, or her breathing would get too quick and her mind would fall apart again, and she couldn’t afford that. Not as the Lady of Winterfell.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Sansa turned and saw that Arya was watching her. She was flipping that dagger between her fingers again, playing with it. Sansa shook her head.

“No,” she admitted with a smile. Arya laughed openly. “Sorry. I was…”

“Worrying about ten thousand things you don’t need to worry about, probably,” Arya finished. “That’s fine. It wasn’t important anyway. Just wondering.”

“About what?” Sansa asked.

“Nothing,” Arya said. “Just Bran and how Bran-y he’s being. If he’s supposed to be some three-eyed something here to help us, you’d think he’d be less about saying stupid mysterious shit and more about saying ‘look, be at this exact spot at this exact time and you can kill the Night King’. This nonsense about needing swords and fire and dragons. Obviously we need those things, Bran. I don’t know. I’d rather have Bran back.”

She had said that a lot lately, always like it was a joke, which Sansa knew meant that wasn’t.

“Me too,” Sansa said. “I wonder what he’d be like, now.”

“Older. Braver. Harder. Like the rest of us.” Arya sighed. She did some trick with the dagger that made Sansa smile a little, and Arya noticed. “You liked that? See, look. You could do it. You were always good at embroidery.”

“What does that have to do with embroidery?”

“It’s all complicated finger movements. I never could figure it out. It’s like watching someone play a bloody harp. But I figured it out with daggers. Look.” She moved a bit more slowly, and Sansa could understand it now, the intricate ways her fingers danced over the metal.

“Maybe you’d be good at embroidery now too,” she said. Arya held the dagger out, and Sansa shook her head, smiling.

“Maybe you can teach me how to use one for its intended purpose before I start trying to do tricks with it,” she suggested, and Arya laughed again. It was a clear, youthful sound, and it made Sansa homesick, oddly, even though she was standing literally in the shadow of her family’s castle.

“That’s a good point,” Arya said. “You should learn at least a little, anyway. A good dagger is the best thing to have. This one’s special, Valyrian steel, but you don’t need Valyrian steel to kill most things. I’ll get you something easier.”

“Sure,” Sansa found herself saying. “Will I have to name it?”

“If you like, but you can’t name it something as stupid as Lady,” Arya said. Sansa shoved her, which made Arya shriek with laughter like a child. “You bitch!”

“Arya!” Sansa laughed. So maybe not so like a child anymore.

“You’ve got to name it something good, like…”

“Needle?” Sansa asked wryly.

“Shut up.”

“What’s that one called?” Sansa asked. Arya held the Valyrian steel blade up and smiled at it.

“Little Fire,” she said. She looked suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a stupid name, but…”

“I like it,” Sansa said quickly. Arya looked up at her. Hopeful and vaguely sad, the way she sometimes looked when she and Sansa spoke. Like every moment she was expecting Sansa to go back to the way she used to be. Sansa smiled wider, trying not to show that it hurt. Trying not to show that she still ached and wished she could fix it. “It’s a good name.”

“Thanks,” Arya said. Begrudgingly, she added, “Lady wasn’t so stupid a name.”

“It was a good name for her,” Sansa said. “She was a little lady.”

“Just like you,” Arya said. There was a wistfulness and a kind of jealousy to it even now.

“And you,” Sansa said. Arya snorted. “What? You’re still a lady. Just because you aren’t exactly like me…”

“Oh, come off it,” Arya said. “Let’s not do this.”

“What? I’m just saying. All the ladies I’ve met. Some of them liked swords and knives. Some of them liked songs and stories. Some of them liked dresses. Some of them were…Cersei.”

“Right,” Arya chuckled.

“You’re a lady who likes swords and protecting the people you love,” Sansa pointed out. “And, and traveling. And home. You’re still a lady. You’re still you. You’re not so different from me. I’m sorry I couldn’t see it before.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Arya said. “There’s nothing…we aren’t those same people anymore.”

There’s nothing to forgive, Jon had said. But that hadn’t been true either.

Sometimes it seemed like she had so much she needed to be forgiven for.

“I’ll keep doing it anyway,” she said, and Arya grinned at her. Annoyed, but smiling anyway. It was so Arya. There were parts of her that were still so Arya.

“I’ll find you a dagger,” she said. She was walking away, leaving Sansa in the courtyard. Walking backwards so she could look at her. Smiling still. The Night King felt very far away. Everything felt far away except for Arya, and except for this. It wasn’t Ramsay Bolton’s home anymore. It wasn’t Sansa Bolton’s, either. She was home. She was safe. She smiled.

“Please,” she said. “Thank you, Arya.”

“Thank me when I’ve taught you how to use it,” Arya said.

“How hard could it be?” Sansa teased, and Arya laughed again before she turned and scampered off. She was still Sansa’s little sister. She was still Arya. And Sansa was still Sansa, too.

Chapter Text

Tyrion had certainly seen better days.

Robb was, by contrast, feeling strangely light. It was a day when everything seemed to be going well. A day when he thought that going to Dragonstone might have been the best decision he ever made. There was something about the quality of the air in Highgarden—at least now that the smoke from the battle was gone—that made him feel free of the stresses of Winterfell and Dragonstone both. The wind in his hair. The smell of the flowers. The colors everywhere, in tapestries and rugs and bed coverings. The kindness and the curiosity and the variety of the dragon queen’s people. Everything seemed good.

Well, almost everything. He still had yet to speak to Daenerys in any real capacity since the battle. He had gotten the impression that she was avoiding him, or perhaps she had sensed his confusion and decided to wait until he made the choice to approach her. He had thrown himself into useful pursuits. Things that she would inevitably see or at least hear of. Training with her fighters. Planning with her advisors. Discussing strategy over meals instead of staying cloistered away with his own people. Every night he saw those wagons burning. Every day he heard Tyrion apologizing to the Lannister army for the oversight and burning alive the people who could not escape the flames. Every time he had a moment to think, he thought about the way Daenerys had looked at him when he cautioned her against burning her enemies alive.

Robb still wasn’t sure why he had been so vehement, and he wasn’t sure why she had, in the end, agreed to a style of execution that the armies of Westeros would be more comfortable with. There was just something about death by fire…it was fearsome and gruesome, and even when quick it left nothing behind but ash. It dehumanized one’s enemies. If Daenerys wanted to be a beloved queen…

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe Robb had been making too many assumptions about the kind of queen Daenerys wished to be. Maybe she wanted to be feared. There was something to be said about that strategy. People who feared, if they were not pressed too hard, could be easier to control. They would also never truly be her people if she ruled that way.

She didn’t entirely avoid him. She smiled at him and spoke to him courteously if they passed one another. She joined him in the training yard from time to time to watch. She asked politely after whatever letters he had received from his family. But there was a wall between them where there hadn’t been before.

She let it down sometimes, just a bit. Like when they stood together with Missandei and watched Brienne spar with Grey Worm in the garden. The two warriors were fast becoming friends, and Brienne was losing some of that wariness she’d always worn when Robb first knew her. The certainty that every man who spoke to her was also somehow making a joke of her.

She was a vision every time she and Grey Worm fought. Her height and her strength meant she was matched well with Grey Worm, who was smaller and lither and fast. Their fights had a pleasing balance to them. Robb had enjoyed the show, standing by with Daenerys and Missandei, feeling proud and glad that Brienne was smiling as she fought. Daenerys had smiled, and she had laughed, and she had cheered on both Brienne and Grey Worm, despite Missandei’s joking protests. But then she would look at Robb, and seem to remember, and the light in her expression would dim slightly. She would hold herself apart again, and he had not yet figured out how to mend what had broken between them.

Brienne, at least, was feeling better. The first few days after the battle had been difficult, but she had not lingered long in her horror. Still too long, for Robb’s tastes; he had done his best to stop Brienne from having to fight the Kingslayer at alll. Anyone else could do it, he had wanted to argue. It doesn’t have to be you. But he accepted her presence at his side, and he could only watch when it came time for her to meet the man she cared for in combat. He should have realized that her aim would be to take Lannister in alive, but he hadn’t. Not at first. Only when he saw her refusal to strike any blows had he understood. Jaime Lannister meant to die, and Brienne of Tarth would not let him.

Watching a warrior like her fight a man while trying not to kill him…Robb still didn’t know how she had been so restrained. Her every strike had been perfect. He had seen men fight desperate battles before, but they were always trying to win. In a way, Brienne was trying to win, too, but her idea of victory was very different from a typical fighter’s. The Kingslayer had attacked her at every turn. Not as skilled as he used to be, maybe, but still more skilled than a common soldier. Holding him off wouldn’t have been easy for Brienne, but it would have been a much simpler thing to simply kill him. Or wound him, even if she wanted him to be alive. Brienne had pleaded with him instead.

The fact that the Kingslayer still lived was a miracle, according to the healers who had tended to him in the immediate aftermath. The first woman who saw to him on the battlefield had shaken her head at Tyrion and Brienne, who were both crouched over him anxiously. She had been replaced with an older woman, who had sighed and hummed and declared it “nearly hopeless”, but then called a litter to take Jaime to a tent that had already been set up for the wounded. Tyrion’s insistence had as much to do with Jaime’s survival as Brienne’s refusal to kill him.

“Try,” Tyrion kept saying, over and over, every time a healer expressed their doubts. “Just try.”

So they had, and then Jaime was declared well enough to move to Highgarden, where Tyrion had somehow talked Olenna and Daenerys into giving him a guest room and a private staff of healers. Both women had swallowed back their true feelings, and they had agreed. Daenerys plainly wished to see if Jaime could convince the rest of his men to kneel to her. Olenna, Robb was sure, wanted to see Cersei’s only true ally turned against her.

The Kingslayer meant to die by tricking Brienne into striking him. He meant for Brienne to kill him. Instead, Brienne and Tyrion had both done whatever they could, and Jaime was still alive.

Brienne had drifted in the days immediately following it. Angry, perhaps, or heartbroken. Both at once. She refused to speak to Robb of it, and he knew from his letters with Sansa that Brienne had likewise refused to speak to her about it, too. Brienne was a woman who held her wounds close, and she refused to let anyone try and tend to them. She would rather pretend that those wounds didn’t exist. Her face was blank and difficult to read, but Robb saw the strain around her eyes. He knew what it was like to battle those demons privately. He just didn’t know what sort of demons hers were. Guilt? Fear? Hope?

Tyrion had been the only one to see Jaime in days. Robb knew that, too, because every time he tried to tell Brienne that she could take some time off, she very pointedly refused. Podrick didn’t know any more about it than Robb did, though he shared Robb’s concerns that Brienne was closing herself off too much, and was forcing all her hurts inside, where they would only fester.

Tyrion, walking down the hall toward Robb now, was a man who didn’t let his hurts fester within him. He wore them on his face, plainly and visibly. Robb at first assumed Tyrion was drunk, but as they drew closer to one another, he could tell that the queen’s Hand was simply tired.

“There you are,” Tyrion said. “Daenerys said I could find you in the library.”

“I’m on my way back,” Robb answered. It sounded false, his politeness. It sounded more like the wariness it probably was beneath the surface. “Why, is there something you need?”

“We haven’t really spoken since you’ve been here,” Tyrion said. “I wanted to tell you that I’m glad to hear that your brother and sister made it back to Winterfell safely.”

Robb smiled, though he meant to keep up a neutral face. Yes, that had been an exciting update to receive. Sansa had apologized for keeping it quiet for as long as she had, but admitted that she didn’t want to tell him anything in letter until she was sure that he trusted Daenerys and her people completely. The letter made Daenerys smile, too, when Robb read it aloud to her, so it was a boon in a few ways. His steps had been lighter ever since, just thinking about Arya and Bran back in Winterfell. They would all be together again soon. All the Starks who remained. He still thought of his mother and his father and baby Rickon at odd moments, still remembered their deaths and their lives and the holes that they would leave in his life forever. But those wounds were more survivable now. Everything else was coming back together, and he could breathe again. His blank moments never lasted very long anymore, and he no longer felt as trapped in his own memories. Perhaps the fighting had done him well, or perhaps it was just the change of scenery. Things had been strained between he and Daenerys since the battle, and he still worried for Brienne, and the pressure of the approach of the army of the dead was still there, but…still. It was something. It made him feel more hopeful for a future where those problems could be fixed.

“Thank you,” he said simply. “You did my brother a service once. He was glad to be able to ride again.”

“Yes,” Tyrion said. “I’m sure he was.” He smiled a little. Neither of them mentioned the dagger that had once been thought to be his, or Catelyn’s hostage-taking that started the war in earnest. It was long past, now.

“Was that all?” Robb asked. Knowing, somehow, that it wasn’t. Tyrion smiled apologetically.

“My brother,” he said. “I assume you’ve heard.”

“That he’s awake and on the mend. Yes. I was glad to hear it.”

“Were you?”

“Not for my own sake,” Robb clarified, and Tyrion laughed slightly.

“No. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. He asks for her.”

Robb sighed. Tyrion plainly knew what he was asking: he looked up at Robb with calm patience.

“I can’t order her to visit him.”

“You could.”

“I won’t.”

“I thought that would be your answer, but I had to ask.”

“Is he so annoying about it, then?”

“No, but that’s worse. He’s always been annoying. Even as a child, he never knew when to shut up. He can talk about anything, for any length of time.”

“Yes, I remember,” Robb said with a grimace. Tyrion laughed.

“I can only imagine,” he said, wistful, as if his brother’s confinement in Robb’s camp was a simpler time. Perhaps it was. “He twisted his ankle once as a child and tormented everyone in the household for days from boredom. He isn’t like that this time. He isn’t like himself at all.”

“I would imagine not. He goaded Brienne into striking him down,” Robb pointed out. “He pretended to be going for me. Your brother’s too clever a fighter not to know exactly what reaction she would have. He knew how he should have blocked that strike, and it was a choice when he didn’t.”

“Yes,” Tyrion said. “I know. Then do you see why I’m so afraid?”

Robb considered. He imagined Jon in the Kingslayer's place.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Tyrion shook his head.

“I’ve never known him to be like this. I know he wanted to die when he lost his hand. He rather glibly informed me of that, once, and he said that Brienne was the one who was able to get through to him. I was hoping she would be able to do so again. I know she doesn’t owe my brother anything, and is probably quite angry with him, but I’m hoping there’s enough of that famous sympathy for him left in her that she’ll at least agree to speak with him.”

Tyrion didn’t know, Robb realized. Tyrion didn’t know just how deeply Brienne cared for the Kingslayer. How was that possible? He had seen what happened on the battlefield, hadn’t he? The idea that Brienne was avoiding Jaime simply because she was angry was so ludicrous that for a moment Robb almost laughed, assuming it was some jape. Assuming there might be only sympathy within her was…

Robb didn’t know exactly why Brienne avoided the Kingslayer, but knowing Brienne as he did, he assumed it was something far more complicated and far less easy to overcome than mere anger.

“Have you spoken to her about it?” he asked.

“I’ve tried, but as you can imagine, she has managed to avoid talking to me. It isn’t difficult for her to outpace me. Her legs are much longer than mine.”

Robb smiled slightly. That was easy to imagine. Brienne had become adept at dodging any of Robb’s attempts at discussing Jaime Lannister. It was no wonder that she was evading Tyrion.

“I’ll speak to her,” he said. “That’s all I can promise.”

“Thank you. I don’t know what good it will do, but it’s the only thing he’s asked for.”

“For Brienne to visit?”

“To see if she would,” Tyrion sighed. “He didn’t even sound very hopeful. I’m at a loss. It would mean the world if you could ask.”

“Of course.” Robb wasn’t sure if Brienne would visit. He wasn’t sure he should even pass along all of Tyrion’s information. The last thing he wanted to do was pressure Brienne into seeing the man if she didn’t want to, and he didn’t want her to feel guilty for not wanting to. He didn’t understand why Brienne had not gone back to see the Kingslayer now that he was awake, but she made her own choices, and he would support her in them.

He would pass along the message, at least. He would try not to let his own thoughts through at all. Simply tell her that Jaime was asking for her. He thought it might do Brienne some good to talk to Jaime, actually. Robb wasn’t sure what she needed, but clearly she needed something.

Tyrion left him in the hall and headed towards the war room. Robb looked back down the hallway from which he had emerged. Perhaps he needed something, too.

The Kingslayer didn’t look so much surprised to see Robb as he looked annoyed.

“This has a familiar feel to it,” he said.

He had been fierce and sarcastic and biting when last Robb spoke to him. Chained up, dirty. Menacing still, like he didn’t know how to be anything else. He had snarled at Robb. He had snarled at all of them. He was always trying to escape.

Now, he lay propped up in a big bed. The sheets were white and billowed around him in a way that made him look small in comparison. He was wry, amused. Exhausted. He should have looked like a shadow of the man he had been before.

His hair had been cleaned, and his beard had been trimmed, but still he looked every bit as intimidating as he had once. Maybe it was just because of the remembrance of it. The way Robb always had to pretend not to be afraid of him whenever they spoke. He didn’t feel frightened of Jaime Lannister now, but an echo of that fear remained. He would never forget the way the Kingslayer fought in the Whispering Wood. His skill with a blade had been mesmerizing.

“Your accommodations are a lot nicer than last time,” Robb pointed out. His mask of bravery was as much a shield as Jaime’s dryness was. He couldn’t blame the Kingslayer for hiding himself away; he didn’t know what to expect of this conversation, either. He forced himself to smile. To act unconcerned. “Though that’s mostly down to the fact that you couldn’t escape if you wanted to.”

Jaime’s jaw twitched slightly as he ground his teeth together, and Robb approached. He stood at the foot of the bed. Perhaps it would have been friendlier to sit beside him in the chair Tyrion had left. He didn’t bother with that. He only stood at the end and watched, and Jaime watched him in return.

“Dare I even ask what you came here for?” Jaime finally asked. Tight with tension. His chest was bare, and he should have looked more vulnerable, but he didn’t. His left fist was clenched on top of the bedsheets. His stump was hidden beneath the blankets. Something about that drew Robb's attention. He felt…he wasn’t sure. Empathy perhaps. Robb still had both his hands, but those difficult months after the Red Wedding had sapped him of his strength and made him feel broken. Shameful. He understood how quickly it became impulse to hide those weaknesses.

“Your brother said you asked for my sister’s sworn sword,” Robb said. He shrugged, making himself more comfortable, folding his arms over his chest. “I wanted to know why.”

“Tyrion spoke to you,” Jaime said slowly. He seemed almost amused by that. “I don’t know what he thought that would accomplish.”

“He said he couldn’t catch up to Brienne on his own,” Robb answered. Jaime almost laughed. Robb could tell. He pressed his lips together and looked away, but the mirth faded quickly. It reminded Robb of himself. Of the way that emotions once bled out of him quickly, impossible to hold on to. There was a time when he had wished to be dead too, wasn’t there? He remembered it. He remembered the Blackfish telling him to stop being such a whining, ungrateful boy.

They’re all dead, Robb had raged. Why would I want to live?

You’re alive, the Blackfish had answered, unsympathetic. That’s all that matters. Shut up about the rest. You’re alive, and they aren’t, so you’re the one who has to live with it.

“She won’t see me,” Jaime said. It had the air of a guess, of only half a question.

“Not on her own. She won’t be so quick to forgive.”

This time, Jaime didn’t bother to stifle the laugh. It was dry, drawling. Just like Robb remembered from the war

“You don’t know her as well as you think you do, if you say that,” he said. “It’s one of her more foolish qualities, her capacity for forgiveness. Of me, especially. She isn’t avoiding me because she’s angry with me.”

“How would you know?” Robb asked, defensive even though he knew the Kingslayer was right. “You haven’t seen her.”

Jaime’s look in response was sharp, and brief. He looked away quickly, and he picked at the blanket with his hand. Shrugged like it wasn’t important.

“I saw enough,” he said. “I didn’t say I was surprised she didn’t want to come. But it isn’t anger.”

No, Robb thought. It isn’t. Brienne wasn’t afraid of much, but her feelings for Jaime were difficult for her, and they were as difficult for Robb to understand. He could understand why they frightened her. He made some small noise of agreement. He felt sympathy, amusingly. Tyrion thought Brienne's feelings could be summed up with such a bland word as sympathy, but Robb knew better. What he felt was sympathy. Empathy. He knew what it was like to be ashamed of your actions too late to make a difference. It was harder to hate a man when you understood them. Easier to hate when they were all stranger. All monster.

“You could have just yielded,” Robb pointed out. He wasn’t sure why he bothered.

“You could have just married the Frey girl,” Jaime fired back. Robb tilted his head in acknowledgement. Jaime rolled his eyes. “What did you feel when you realize that love had cost you everything?”

Robb couldn’t tell if it was a sincere question or if Lannister was trying to get another rise out of him. It didn’t matter.

“I felt,” he said. “And I feel. That nothing I do can atone for making that choice. For being selfish enough to choose it. I loved Talisa. She was wonderful. Generous. Clever. Smart. She never would have used Wildfire to burn her enemies.”

Jaime’s smile was snide, and he looked like that prisoner in the cage again.

“So you had less to atone for, then. And still you flagellate yourself for it. Well, what else would one expect from a Stark?”

“Mm,” Robb allowed with a reluctant grin. Lannister looked away.

“I don’t expect forgiveness, and I don’t expect I will ever stop atoning for what I have done,” he admitted. “I just want to speak to her.”

Robb looked at Jaime more carefully. The defeated posture. The way he kept avoiding Robb’s eyes.

“Why?” Robb asked.

“Why? What do you mean why?”

“Brienne is important to my family. She’s important to me. If I’m going to risk distressing her by telling her you’ve asked for her, I’m not going to do it for no reason. I know that she cares for you. I know she believes you honorable, despite every evidence. I know that she respects you, though I hardly understand why. What is it that you want from her?”

Jaime was frankly incredulous, staring at Robb as if he had never met him before. But when he saw that Robb was serious, he nearly laughed. A huffing sound that might have been a tired attempt.

“Oh, I hardly know,” he said, sounding like he was trying to be far more casual than he actually managed. “Brienne and I have been through a lot together. We appreciate each other. It was badly done, making her strike me down. I thought she’d do a better job of it, but I shouldn’t have made that choice. Not that it felt like a choice at the time. I just wanted the battle to end. It should have been you. I chose you. It would have made quite the ending to the story of the evil Lannisters and the innocent Starks. The undead boy-king striking the Kingslayer down. Learning from the mistake he made in leaving me alive last time. But then she was there. And I wanted…well. It doesn’t matter. I want to apologize for my madness. And for every other way I’ve disappointed her.”

There was a confused, almost irritated expression on Jaime’s face. Robb noted it, along with the slump of his shoulders and the wistful way he spoke. It wasn’t as if Robb had a lot of experience in this. His own courtship was short and almost immediately answered. Talisa hadn’t liked him very much at first, but she had always been kind enough about it, and she had fallen for him so quickly, in the end. But Robb had spent enough nights feeling dreadful about it, lying awake and thinking of her contempt when he should have been thinking of battle strategy or something else useful. He looked at Lannister now, and he saw the same restless, unsettled energy.

“You love her,” he said. Lannister’s expression was too funny not to laugh at, and so Robb did. The Kingslayer. The former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. A sister-fucking, oathbreaking monster. And he was in love with the most honorable woman in Westeros. Him. Jaime Lannister. And her. “That’s absurd,” he said. Jaime’s eyes grew narrow.

“I don’t,” he said, clipped. “And I don’t see what would be so funny about it if I did. Watch yourself.”

“Watch myself?” Robb asked. He didn’t mean to keep laughing at the man, not when he understood just how difficult it was to exist in that fog of loathing Jaime currently occupied, but it was even funnier to think that Lannister could be any threat to him now. Confined to bed as he was. Injured as he was. Then he realized: “you think I’m mocking her? You misunderstand me.” Jaime glared even deeper. “Brienne of Tarth is one of the finest woman I’ve ever met. One of the finest people. I’m honored to have her in my guard. It’s you I wonder at. What could appeal to you about that? She’s nothing like your sister.”

Jaime’s glare, truly, was a poisonous thing. Even knowing that there was no way for him to hurt Robb, Robb felt the power of it.

“No,” Jaime agreed. “She’s nothing like my sister.”

It was baldly stated, spoken with a resigned air, and Jaime met Robb’s eyes when he said it. There was something of tense in the set of his shoulders, but he didn’t get defensive or try to argue, and Robb understood more than he had before. Jaime seemed to understand at the same moment. His brow furrowed. He opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t say anything. He looked at Robb as if Robb had said something shocking.

He wanted Brienne to kill him, Robb thought. Because he didn’t want to go back to his sister. He didn’t want to win. Brienne is nothing like Cersei. She’s nothing like Cersei, and he loves her for it.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said. It plainly bothered Lannister to have to humble himself by nodding in thanks, but he did it anyway. Then he went back to staring down at his hand as it clenched and unclenched on top of the sheets, and Robb left the room without saying anything else.

Tyrion had been right. Jaime didn’t seem very hopeful. He seemed resigned, as Robb had been when he woke in Riverrun and realized that he would not be joining his mother and his wife.

It wasn’t easy to survive something that you wanted to die from. It wasn’t easy to realize that you had failed. It couldn’t have been easy to recognize at last that the person you had followed and believed in wasn’t going to win. It couldn’t have been easy to not want her to win, despite everything. Robb could understand why Jaime was so lost now. Maybe it would have been easier for him to die. Maybe Westeros would have even been a better place if he had. But it wouldn’t have been easier for Brienne to have been the one to kill him, and so Robb would be glad at least that he had survived for that.

Chapter Text

He had no excuse, really, for not recognizing the depth of his attachment until Robb Stark spoke the word he hadn’t allowed himself to think in relation to Brienne. No excuse except perhaps for the fact that he had never loved anyone but Cersei. He’d never been forced to recognize another claim on his heart, because there had never been one.

He had known, of course, that he cared for Brienne. He wasn’t quite so broken that he didn’t realize that. He understood also that Brienne cared for him. But that was an easy word: care. He had cared for lots of people of people in his life, to varying degrees. His children, generally speaking. His brother. Care was easy when it came to his family, and it had become easy when it came to Brienne, as well. He had never had a true friend like her, and it was easy enough to believe that that was what it was.

 He cared for Sansa Stark. He had cared for Arthur Dayne. He had cared for Elia and her children, and for Rhaella, and for Rhaegar.

But love.

The word had been jarring when Robb Stark spoke it aloud. Jarring because it was spoken so plainly and jarring because it was so true. He had denied it, because what else was he supposed to do? Acknowledge it? Admit it to Robb Stark, of all people? No. But even as he had spoken the denial aloud, the idea that the bratty northern king might be mocking the idea of loving Brienne had nearly driven him out of his bed to choke the boy with his one hand to shut him up. It was that kind of defensive rage that used to lead to him standing guard outside Robert Baratheon's chambers fantasizing about all the ways he could kill this king. He was a man made of jealousy, and a man made of love, and a man made of an overpowering urge to protect that love, even if he didn’t know it enough to name it.

But now he did, and he could name it without confusion: he loved her.

It went beyond care. Likely it had for a while. The more he thought about it…he had loved her when he gave her his sword, hadn’t he? Maybe not like this, maybe not with this fervor, but in his defense, he still thought he loved only his sister when he gifted Oathkeeper to Brienne. Now that his heart had been hollowed, now that he felt he had been scraped raw of the only love he once believed he had been made for, it was easier to see what else he had been carrying inside him all this time.

He had longed to go with her when she left Kings Landing. He must have known, at least somewhere within him, that there was nothing for him in the capital but more misery and more self-hatred. He had watched her ride away from him, and he had wished for a horse and the will to mount it. His feet had carried him for a few steps behind her, as if his body thought she still carried the rope that had once bound him to her. He had given her a sword. He had given her armor. He had jumped into a bear pit to protect her for the simple reason that he could not abide the thought of her being dead. He had thought it guilt, at the time. Maybe it was something more.

Seeing her again at Riverrun…

Yes, it was love at Riverrun. There was no mistaking it now. That lightness within him when he saw her in his tent. A giddy, bubbling, youthful feeling. Relief to see her alive, yes. Pleasure to see a friend among the Freys, certainly. But love, too. It had been love for a while, and perhaps Jaime should be embarrassed that it took Robb Stark of all people to call it what it was and put such an obvious name to it. He wasn’t, though. He was too shocked for embarrassment. Too grateful, humiliating as it was. How long would it have taken him to admit the word on his own? To look at it without flinching? His every instinct would have been to ignore it. Deny it. Draw himself deeper within so that he did not have to examine it.

I loved her on the battlefield.

He had loved her when she stood before him, their sword in her grasp, raised against him. He had loved her when her sword sliced his cheek, and he had loved her when she looked so hurt to do it. She grieved him before she even ran her sword through him, and she had fought so hard to keep him alive, and he had loved her for that, as well, because no one had ever cared half so much about him. Not Cersei. Not Tyrion. Oh, his siblings loved him well enough, but not like this. Not with no expectations beyond his continued survival. He stood against her. She believed he was trying to kill her king. And yet she still had loved him. She had sobbed for him when she thought him dying, and the sounds pierced his heart sharper than any blade. He loved her for it. He had damned his love for his sister and blamed his love for his sister, but his love for Brienne had saved him. His love and her loyalty and whatever burned inside her that made her forget all else and cry over his body as he faded.

He had never been enough for his siblings. He had always been largely his body to them. Cersei a woman and Tyrion a dwarf, and Jaime was the man they longed to be, and Jaime was the man who helped them stand against the world. He would love them regardless of what they could do for him. He had proven that again and again. Would they love him the same? He thought of Cersei’s disgust when she saw that his sword hand was gone. The best part of him. He’d felt that keenly, and he knew when he saw her sneer that she agreed. But surely, he had thought, she would still want him. If the positions were reversed, wouldn’t he still love her? Wouldn’t he help her? Hold her? Comfort her through her loss?

She hadn’t done any of that. It was Brienne who did those things. Brienne had hated him, and still she had held him close and murmured assurances when he was sick and weak, and still she protected him when Locke and his men tried to have their fun with him when he was too disoriented to fight back. She had been beaten for it. Threatened for it. Sneered at and called horrible things, but it was Brienne, and she didn’t know how to back down when she believed she was doing the right thing.

Was that when it started? He had to wonder. Or did it only start when he returned to Kings Landing and he saw with his own eyes the contrast between Brienne’s gentleness and Cersei’s scorn? Was that the moment his wasted heart realized that it wanted something he had never even known it could have?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t say. It wasn’t any one thing or any one moment. It was just Brienne, all of her. How could he not love her? Brienne knew him for what he was. He had seen her disappointment, her deep unhappiness, her frank yearning for him to be a better man, a man she could be proud to care for. But she would have been satisfied just for him to survive. To live, even if he would still live as an enemy.

Cersei, he thought. Would rather see me dead than turned against her.

It was an unwelcome realization, but that didn’t make it untrue, did it? He wanted to shove it away out of instinct, but he didn’t. He let it linger.

Things had been different since he woke up. They were different before, on the battlefield, when he first realized that he did not want to return to her, but there was more clarity now. A fog of nothing had settled over him at first. Despair to still be alive. Exhaustion to still be alive after realizing that he was relieved to be dying. But Tyrion was there, telling him to fight, reminding him of Brienne’s sobs on the battlefield, and something had stirred within him.

At first, it only made the guilt worse. She didn’t come to see him, and he was sorry. Sorry and wretched and constantly thinking of Cersei. Prodding at that wound and feeling a void inside himself instead of the desperation to be with her that he once would have said was as much a part of him as his heart or his lungs. Blood and breath and Cersei.

But as the days passed, that despair faded. The guilt faded too, a bit, because he could no longer recognize the man who tried to die on Brienne’s sword within himself. Tyrion still worried, but Jaime was no longer that man. Madness, Tyrion had called it, and maybe he was right. It felt like madness now. Maybe that was fitting. Cersei could not lose her hold on herself without driving him to the same. Following her in all things even as he tried to escape.

He didn’t think the madness was still within him. Days passed, and he grew stronger, and he felt more and more secure within himself. Maybe this last blow to his old self would be what he needed to feel fully whole. He was a man made for love. He had always understood that about himself, and now he felt relief to know that it wasn’t only Cersei’s love he was made for. 

For so long, he had subsisted on so little. Cersei’s words were all of love and care, and those had been easy enough to remind himself of when the gentleness turned to violence, the sweetness into scorn. He had clung to her words greedily, taking them as evidence of her love for so long. Her words and her kisses and her body against his. That was all the proof he had required. But she turned her eyes away from him. She dismissed him. She growled and snapped and snarled at him when he dared to ask for more, and she called him hopelessly stupid, and she always had her eyes on power. He asked her to run away with him, to be with him, to marry him, and every time she laughed or sneered or said Jaime, be serious. She would not be some nameless mercenary’s wife, even if the nameless mercenary was him.

She wanted power, glory, a crown. What was Jaime compared to a crown?

You love her.

Robb’s words had been startled, his eyes wide, his expression incredulous to a degree that made Jaime furious, though he was just as surprised to hear them. You love her.

I do, don’t I? I love her. How had he not noticed? How had no one told him?

Was it so obvious that it only took a few minutes of conversation for the boy to see? Bronn had made some leading comments before, of course, but Bronn was Bronn, and he would make those comments about everyone, and so they never landed the same way Robb’s shocked utterance had. Bronn’s japes left Jaime feeling tense and annoyed every time the mercenary offhandedly said something like, “all you other men are idiots. Talking about your Tarth girl’s size like it’s a drawback. None of you have been with a strong woman, and it shows. The things she could do to me…” before sighing wistfully. Yes, Jaime had tensed and gotten annoyed, and he told Bronn to shut up, and of course that was all because he respected Brienne and wanted Bronn to respect her as well. It had nothing whatsoever to do with jealousy or discomfort or finding himself wondering about it.

And yes, he had desired Brienne. He had desired her when she stood up in the bath. He had desired her when he thought about her in his tent. He had longed for her, wanted her, liked her. He had dreamed of her gentleness, and he had longed for it, and he had longed for her, but...A man could want a woman in that way without being in love with her. Men did it all the time. No, he had never been one of them, but that didn’t mean it was impossible, and Cersei had been so different since he returned without his hand. It made sense in some way that he would look for his fantasies elsewhere. But love? How was he supposed to know it was love?

Gods. He really was an idiot, wasn’t he? Cersei was right. Of course it was love. It was a love that did not demand oaths or fealty or proof. It asked only goodness of him, rather than talking him into doing things that made him hate himself. How was he supposed to recognize it? He’d never known a love like that before.

What a waste of a life his had been. He’d loved and followed his sister beyond all reason, and it had ruined him for a love that could have been exactly what he had always craved. Brienne was a warrior with a maiden’s heart, and she would have been gentle with him, if they had ever been together. She wouldn’t have mocked him for his wants, and she wouldn’t have turned away from his kisses, and she wouldn’t have catalogued all the best ways to hurt him so that she could use them when he was upsetting her. She wouldn’t ever even imagine doing something like that.

When they were younger, he and Cersei had been something else. Perhaps it had never been healthy—anything that started so young couldn’t be, he didn’t think—but it had been right. Better. Closer to perfect. But it had changed so long ago that he couldn’t even remember the last time he felt that rightness he used to. For years he had chased it. He told himself that if he just did this one thing for Cersei... If he just fixed this one problem… If he just held her a little bit tighter, it would fix everything, and they would go back to being what they used to be. It never worked, because that wasn’t what Cersei wanted. Cersei wanted him, and she already had him, and that was the end of it. He was led along on a string, constantly hoping, constantly wanting, and Cersei was never satisfied with him. She was always looking for something, too. Something he could never seem to give her.

Why had it taken this to make him see it?

He’d been a soldier most of his life. He knew that it wasn’t unusual for a man to find himself changed by coming so close to death in a battle. Men would wake after devastating wounds and announce that they were going to find the woman they thought they had lost. They were going to return home and help their parents with the farm. They were going to be nicer to their brothers, their sisters. Resolutions were always made by dying men who found that they regretted more than they had expected to, and suddenly found themselves without the time to fix it. He never thought he would be one of them. He knew his regrets. Thought he knew his regrets, anyway. And he knew they were not the kind that were particularly easy to fix. But here he was, awake and regretting. Just like any other man.

He should have gone with Brienne when she was leaving Kings Landing. He said it when he thought he was dying, because it was true. He should have gone with her to find Sansa Stark. Or he should have gone with her when they saw each other in Riverrun. It should never have come to this. He should never have made her do this.

Tyrion visited often, and there were plenty of handmaids and stewards who popped in and out to make sure he was still resting and didn’t need anything, but otherwise his days were filled with boredom. He found himself sleeping more than he had in years. What else was there to do? His wound was healing slowly, and his body seemed to need it. He was always tired. His mind was foggy, distant. He had wanted to die, and he hadn’t been allowed. Not yet, anyway. But he didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing instead.

Tyrion came to see him that night, as he always did. Now that Jaime was more himself, he could see how Tyrion worried for him. He hadn’t given it much attention in the hazy first days after he woke in pain to find that he was not dead but merely close to it. Tyrion smelled of wine, as he often did, and that was another thing to feel guilty about. He hadn’t done enough for Tyrion. Not ever, maybe, but certainly not lately.

“A letter arrived for you,” Tyrion said. He fished it out of his pocket and handed it over with a raised eyebrow. It was a small scroll, stamped with the Winterfell seal. Jaime couldn’t help but smile as he took it. “A smile. That’s new.”

“It’s from Sansa Stark,” Jaime said, primarily because he knew it would shock his brother. Tyrion’s eyebrows flew higher, and he was quietly satisfied with that. “I imagine she’s displeased I didn’t respond to her first letter. Or perhaps she’s displeased because I compelled her sworn sword to try and kill me. I’ll have to read it and find out.”

He struggled to open it with one hand. Bad enough normally, but his left was weak with exhaustion, and it was difficult to get leverage when you were on bedrest. Tyrion said nothing, just took the scroll back gently and opened it. And then immediately began reading. Because he was Tyrion.

“Apparently my first letter wasn’t firm enough, and you thought you could safely ignore it. I mean to be more plain this time: I expect a response.” Tyrion snorted, but it quickly grew into a quiet panic when Jaime tried to sit up to snatch the letter away. He shoved the scroll back into Jaime’s hand. His expression smoothed back over into unconcern, but his mouth had a slight tremor to it. Disapproving and nervous. Jaime felt sorry again. He would lie quietly and behave himself to make Tyrion feel better, but he felt oddly exposed, hearing Sansa's words from Tyrion’s mocking mouth.

“We’ve been writing,” he said, defensive.

“You’ve been writing to my wife.”

“The young woman father forced you to marry, yes.”

“You know I didn’t mean it in any other way.”

“I hope not. I don’t think she or her brothers would take very kindly to your reminders. Or her sister, for that matter. Sansa says Arya’s learned quite a few skills since she’s been away.”

“Sansa says,” Tyrion repeated. His eyebrows could not have climbed any higher without physically detaching from his face.

“Are you going to give me a lecture on propriety?” Jaime asked.

“No, hardly. I’m just…what possessed you to start up a correspondence with her, of all people? Was it Cersei’s idea?”

“No. Gods. Cersei didn’t know. I kept this from her, at least.”

Jaime looked down at the letter. It was a rather long one, and Sansa had such small, cramped writing. It would take him a while to work it out. All for the privilege of being berated by a woman young enough to be his daughter. Still, he smiled. Tyrion sighed explosively.

“Jaime,” he said. “You realize I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong with you.”

“What?” Jaime asked. He was amused, though he could hardly figure out why. Tyrion looked so sad and so earnest, and it really wasn’t funny. He still felt guilty and angry and self-loathing, but Tyrion was just so…sincere. It was unseemly. Their father would have hated it. Maybe that was why it was funny. “Help me?”

“You tried to end your own life.”

“I fought in a battle.”

“For the side you knew would lose. And you refused to yield even when you knew it was impossible for you to win. You tricked your only friend in the world into striking you down. Jaime. Look at me.”

Jaime did, annoyed by his little brother’s tone. Annoyed by the fact that he was being made to feel guilty for something that should have been his own choice. To die with a sword in his hand. A good death. A clean death.

A death in the arms of the woman you love. A death by her hand.

Yes, he already felt enough guilt for that, though he still didn’t think it was such a bad thing, in the end, to want to die.

Tyrion was so earnest, looking at him. Jaime could only hold his gaze for a few moments before he had to turn away.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he admitted.

“Anything else,” Tyrion fired back. He seemed grateful for this. For a conversation. It made Jaime feel guilty again. When would it stop? The guilt. Would it ever?

“I failed her, Tyrion,” Jaime said. Before his brother could retort with something no doubt very clever, he said, “I wanted to fail her. I wanted Brienne to win, but more than that, I wanted myself to lose. I knew…”

“You do not owe our sister even half of what you’ve given her,” Tyrion interrupted.

“It isn’t about owing.”

“It isn’t about love, either. No matter what you think.”

“It was,” Jaime argued.

Tyrion was frozen. Staring at Jaime. He looked him over carefully, as if he would see some evidence of whether Jaime’s words were true.

“Was,” he repeated.

“I’ll always love her,” Jaime deflected. “I don’t think you can unlearn something like that. But…Tyrion, it isn’t what it was. It can’t be. Not after everything. She isn’t...or maybe it’s me who isn’t the same. Maybe I’ve finally changed. It took me longer than I would have liked.”

“Forgive me for being skeptical,” Tyrion finally said, and Jaime laughed. It hurt his chest to laugh. Like his heart was pushing at his throat, trying to get larger again after a lifetime of shrinking into the tiny spot that it had been afforded.

“I don’t blame you for being skeptical,” he said. “I’d think you were a fool if you believed me. It isn’t just about that, anyway. It’s about doing what’s right. Cersei’s choices…she doesn’t want to listen. She doesn’t want to hear me. She isn’t acting rationally.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Tyrion said. “When I heard about Tommen…”

“I know,” Jaime said.

“There’s nothing left for her to lose but you, and…”

“I wouldn’t be enough for her to bargain for. You can say it.”

“You know I hate to.”

“No you don’t. You delight in it.”

Tyrion’s only acknowledgement was a slight tilt of the head. Jaime tried not to feel bitter about being right. He was lucky Tyrion gave him as much leeway as he did about Cersei. Lucky and humiliated.

“Our sister will do anything to hold on to her power,” Tyrion mused. “When her children were alive, I would have been able to say but she will never endanger her children, and perhaps that would have even been true. But now? If she’s truly losing her grip…”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s written on your face. It’s in your every action. And I’ve spoken to some of our soldiers. They’re all saying it. They told me they wanted you to take the throne.”

“I’ve heard their thoughts. They’re not as clever as they think. Half of them only want me on the throne because I’ve got a cock. The other half probably just think I can’t be any worse.”

“Tell me truthfully, Jaime. How bad is it?”

“Are you asking as my brother? Or are you asking as the Hand to the Targaryen queen?”

“That’s an unfair question.”

“Is it?”

“You told me you wanted to lose. Do you still mean to stay loyal to Cersei?”

“Loyalty has nothing to do with it.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“I could not support Cersei’s choices. I still can’t. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to swear to the daughter of the man I killed. Not that I’m expecting her to want my sword. I have to assume a trial is coming.”

“You know I wouldn’t allow her to.”

“Allow her? In my experience, the Hand can do very little when the ruler is set on something. And the most unfortunate of them lose their heads for trying. I won’t let you die trying to save my life.”

“Daenerys isn’t her father.”

“No, she isn’t. Her father never had dragons. Just wildfire.”

“Cersei’s the one with the wildfire now, Jaime.”

“You don’t need to remind me.”

“Apparently I do. She used it to blow up the sept. A sept, Jaime.”

“I’m aware.”

“And yet you stayed.”

“Yes. I did. I stayed. What else was I to do?”

“I don’t know. Anything?”

Tyrion was angry now, and Jaime felt his own anger bleeding away. He was relieved.

“Now you see,” he said.

“See what?”

“Why I wanted Brienne to kill me.”

“Jaime.” Alarmed, now, his anger fading. Tyrion looked older when he sighed. His shoulders sagged, like he had stopped trying to hide his exhaustion.

“I made my choices.”

“Yes. I know.”

“I followed her. I stayed with her.”

“Yes. You did.”

“I could have stopped her. I could have put a sword through her back same as I did to Aerys. I could have turned her army against her. I could have turned to Riverrun and taken it back from the Freys and given it back to the Tullys where it belongs. I could have marched north and pledged our soldiers to the Starks, and some of our men would have followed me. I could have gone back to Casterly Rock and taken it for myself. I could have raised our banners against her. I could have confirmed for everyone that those children were mine and that Cersei’s claim to the throne was meaningless. I could have done anything.”

“Jaime,” Tyrion was saying. “Jaime, please.”

“I did nothing. I did nothing to stop her. I let her touch me. I let her fuck me. I didn’t even want to anymore, but I let her do all of it, because why wouldn’t I? What else was there for me? What else could I do but anything? Hundreds of my men died in that battle because I was too weak to stop following her. I should have been one of them.”

Tyrion sagged further. He was shaking his head. His lips were pale as they pressed together. He looked as if he wanted to be angry. He looked as if he was too afraid to be angry.

“Jaime,” he said again. Jaime’s chest was heaving. He felt lightheaded, too, like he was in the middle of a panic. He didn’t feel like he was. Everything felt very clear. He should be dead. He should have died.

“I just wish it hadn’t been her,” he said.

“Daenerys?”

“Brienne.”

“I’ve been trying to get her to come see you.”

“I know. You should stop. She’s made her position on that clear, and she’s right. She should stay far away from me.”

“Yes, I think she should. I like my brother with fewer holes in him. Even if it was an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

Tyrion glared, said, “on her part, you fucking idiot,” and put his head in his hands. Jaime knew he should be sorry. He couldn’t quite muster it. He was away again, in the place he liked to be. On a bridge over a stream. Fighting with Brienne. But it wasn’t fighting anymore. It was laughter, sparring. Their swords came together. He had two hands, and she was flushed. She bit her bottom lip. She smiled at him.

“I wanted it to be her. That’s the only thing I regret. I should have realized…well. I think I did realize how it would kill her to do it. I just didn’t care. I just wanted it to be her. I didn’t want it to be dragon fire or a beheading. I wanted her sword.”

“The sword that father gave you,” Tyrion said, like that was the important part. Sometimes Jaime remembered that Tyrion’s ideas weren’t always clever ones.

“It wouldn’t matter. As long as it was hers.”

Jaime looked at Tyrion, and Tyrion was looking back at him. Oddly, frowning, his brow furrowed.

“I suppose it’s obvious to you too,” Jaime said.

“What’s obvious?” Tyrion asked.

“I’m in love with her, apparently.”

Tyrion only stared for a moment. Then he laughed, but it was uncertain, and it faded quickly.

“You’re serious.”

“Stark saw it.”

“Sansa? Or Robb?”

“I suppose Sansa’s probably known it for a while, but I meant Robb. I knew I cared for her. I knew I cared for her more than I should. I knew I wanted her, I suppose. But Robb…he just said it. Like it was obvious. And it was. Did you know?”

“No.” Jaime found he was disappointed with Tyrion, though he didn’t think he should be. “I don’t think I ever would have noticed. I never thought it would be anyone but Cersei for you.”

“Neither did I.”

“Brienne of Tarth. Of all people, her.”

“Please don’t, Tyrion. I’ll have to get out of this bed to punch you, and you know the maester will be angry with me if I do.”

“I don’t mean anything by it. Only…Cersei is…Cersei. And Brienne…”

“I know very well what both of them are. More than most, I expect. Cersei’s beauty is Cersei’s beauty, and Brienne’s is her own.”

“Brienne the Beauty,” Tyrion mused. “I heard someone call her that, once, in Kings Landing. I told him to lower his voice so you wouldn’t hear him. Maybe I did know, in a way. I thought you had a fondness for her that was rather like a favorite pet. I don’t think I ever would have considered love.”

“She isn’t my pet. If anything, I’m hers: the idiot creature she tolerates despite the fact that I keep shitting on the carpet.”

“Seems to me the easy solution is to stop shitting on the carpet.”

“I’m not looking for a solution. I know what I’ve done.”

“I’ll try and stop her again.”

“Don’t. Stark said he’d talk to her, and I’ll…if she doesn’t want to see me, I’ll leave her be. After what I did…I know she cared for me, for all I’m too much of a fool to deserve it. I might have ruined it. I was selfish.”

“There’s a change.”

“Shut up.”

“You sound more like yourself. I’ll keep tormenting you if it means you stop acting like you have been.”

“How have I been acting?”

“Empty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No you aren’t.”

“I am. I know I’m dreadful. I know I’m hard to love.”

“You aren’t. That’s the problem.”

“It would be easier if you didn’t.”

“Well. That’s true, at least. But I’d rather have you. You’re my brother. I love you. I need you to stay alive. Being Hand is a lot of work, and these Unsullied don’t like my jokes. No one laughs at me. It’s really awful. I need you to take pity on me.”

He was smiling, but Jaime could see the strain. He wanted assurances that Jaime wasn’t sure he could give. Still, Jaime smiled back.

“I suppose I could pretend to find you funny for a little bit,” he said. “As long as I’m allowed to stay.”

“She isn’t her father, Jaime.”

“I killed her father.”

“Yes. And she knows what her father was.”

“Does she?”

“Jaime…”

“Will she be a good queen? At least tell me that. Will she be a better queen than Cersei?”

Tyrion had the good grace to think it over.

“She’s young,” he finally said. “And she hasn’t had much luck in the art of ruling, but she has been in some very difficult places. She has a good heart. She has good intentions. Sometimes that’s enough.”

“Quite the endorsement.”

“I could give you the full pitch. You asked for honesty. I think she can do it.”

Jaime nodded. He wasn’t sure what to believe, but Tyrion at least seemed sincere.

“Just…if she orders it…”

“She won’t.”

“Just promise me it won’t be fire.”

“Jaime.”

“I don’t think I want to die by fire. I’ve seen men go that way before. It didn’t seem particularly pleasant. And I’ve put you and Brienne through enough. Tell your queen that she’ll have at least two fewer supporters if she does it.”

“Jaime, I promise.” Tyrion was looking at him very intently, and Jaime felt some of his panic starting to fade. He nodded.

“Thank you,” he said. “And if you see Brienne, at least tell her I’m sorry. Even if she won’t come to see me. Don’t mention that at all, actually. Just tell her I’m sorry.”

Tyrion nodded, and Jaime ignored his little brother’s sad, knowing smile. He held tighter to the scroll from Sansa Stark. She, at least, hadn’t forsaken him. Her letter would be chastising as usual, but he knew now that she wouldn’t stop writing to him. If the revelation about Bran hadn’t done it, nothing would. She was too much like him. She clung to the people that she had. She didn’t know how to walk away from them.

Chapter Text

It seemed an innocent question when Missandei posed it, but Dany was suspicious anyway. She met her friend’s eyes in the mirror as Missandei finished adjusting Dany’s windblown braid.

“Did Varys put you up to this?” she asked. Missandei seemed surprised by the question, and perhaps a little offended. Dany was sorry for it.

“No, of course not,” Missandei said. “I was just wondering.”

Have you introduced Robb Stark to your dragons yet?

The knowing lilt to that question…

Missandei was obviously just making conversation. But ever since Varys had brought up the possibility that an alliance could be made through a marriage to Robb Stark, Dany had been on edge, scrutinizing their every interaction. Going over all the reasons why it made a good match and all the reasons why she didn’t want to.

Besides, it was Varys. It was better to assume that everything was part of his plan. It was harder to get swept away by it that way.

“It’s just,” Missandei continued. “He is a kind man. He’s good with people. He is…he would be a good leader. Men listen to him. Women are fond of him. You said you would need to choose a husband from a great house when you came to Westeros, and you could choose much worse.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Daenerys admitted. She could hardly be angry with Missandei for pointing out the obvious, and besides, her first thought upon noticing that her braid was out of place was that she was meeting with Robb soon and should be presentable. She was no longer the young girl she had been when she was wed to Khal Drago, but in some ways she still had a girlish heart, and she simply liked spending time with him. She had been afraid at first that he was another politician, like all the other men who tried to win her heart for the power and politics of their nations. The promise of three dragons and all her armies was too tempting to resist for most men, and they were so obvious about their greed and their lust and their lack of care about Daenerys Targaryen herself.

But Robb had been open with her. If he wanted her dragons, he’d done quite a good job pretending not to. He had met Drogon once, and he had been so nervous that she had laughed at him. That had been before the battle, when things were easier between them. They had seemed unbalanced since, and she had no idea how to fix it. He had been kind enough to her the previous day, when Olenna organized a small feast to celebrate their victory. He had even danced with her, but he had danced with many people, and there was nothing in his attentions to her that seemed particularly pointed.

She hadn’t known any of the Westerosi dances. She’d never had much occasion to learn, growing up, but Olenna had insisted on a proper feast, and Tyrion had insisted that she join the merriment, because it would make their allies see her as more than just the fearsome queen who rode into battle on a dragon. So she had, dancing with Robb and Varys and Tyrion and a string of others that Tyrion had deemed safe. When she mentioned to Robb that she had never danced before, he showed her the steps. Smiling, not laughing at her. Laughing along when she finally laughed at herself. She had been aware of everyone’s eyes on them. Of course everyone’s eyes were on them. What a pair they made. What a powerful alliance they would be.

They did make a fine pair. And she had enjoyed his company. Perhaps that wasn’t as important as what power he could add to hers, but…it felt important, all the same. And Robb had been so much more standoffish since the battle. The dance had been a rare moment of lightness between them. Ever since he had stood between Drogon and Brienne, and ever since he had cautioned her to show mercy, something had been different.

Even before the battle, she had often wondered what he truly thought of her. She didn’t trust very easily, after having been burned so many times, and Robb Stark was always faultlessly polite. It made him impossible to get a read on. She was used to being the inscrutable one, because she hid her feelings behind a mask that never cracked or wore away. Robb’s mask was prettier: he cloaked himself in courtesies and pretended not to be a wolf at heart.

She remembered, sometimes, that he had also been thrust into a position of leadership when he was very young. Like her, he’d had to learn courtesy and politics as a survival mechanism. He had been fighting for his family, for the people he loved. His northerners had looked to him, and he had failed them, but still they had chosen him a second time, when he hadn’t even wanted the responsibility. It made her wonder why she was fighting so hard for this cold land and its cold people. It made her jealous for the childhood he’d had and for the people he loved who had trusted him enough to rely on him.

Now, even her own people seemed disposed towards him. Missandei was right, and Varys had been right when he reminded her, too: she had given up Daario for a reason. She knew she would need a husband that Westeros would approve of. Robb was young, unmarried, and he claimed kingship of a considerable portion of her land. If she married him, she wouldn’t have to force him to give it up, and she had found more and more as their days passed together that she didn’t want to force him to give her anything that he would not give willingly. Marrying Robb Stark would solve an awful lot of her problems, all at once. But it wouldn’t solve the problem of finding out how he felt.

She was a queen. She was a Khaleesi. She had known that she would not marry for love. She had loved before, and she did not need to again. It would be enough to have an intelligent, kind husband who would treat her well and not try to steal her throne. Was Robb Stark that man? He seemed to be, but she would not be so foolish as to trust without certainty. Was he relying on his charm and his fair looks to grant him her heart? Was he waiting to seize power from her?

She missed Daario sometimes. The warmth of his body and the openness of his smiles.

Robb Stark’s smiles are open, too. He never hides anything away from you.

But that was the thought of a foolish girl, and she would not allow it.

Missandei finally finished fixing her hair, and Dany thanked her absently as she strode out onto her balcony. Rhaegal and Drogon were playing in the flowery field beyond Highgarden, nipping at each other. They seemed more settled here than they had in Meereen, but still she worried. Westeros had forgotten the power of dragons just as much as the rest of the world had. They weren’t prepared for her children. It was good for the people to fear them, but they couldn’t be too afraid. She needed them to accept her.

Time passed as she watched her children, though she scarcely noticed. She was always at peace when she watched them at play. They reminded her of where she had come from, and they gave her the strength she needed to get where she needed to go.

When Missandei appeared by her elbow, she had an apologetic smile on her face, and Dany knew she was needed.

“What is it?” she asked with a smile to match her friend’s.

“Robb Stark is here for your meeting, your grace. He has requested a private audience.”

Missandei’s tone told Dany exactly how little she liked that request, but Dany found herself disposed to grant it. Things between she and the king of the north had been rocky enough lately that she was eager to give him this. Open the trust between them again, somehow. Fix what had been broken by the sight of her dragons in battle.

There had been days since that she had felt defensive about her children. How dare he judge them? How dare he fear her? But there were more days when she understood. Tyrion had warned her about the flames. About her father, and about her house, and about the things that the people of Westeros would find dishonorable and what they would find acceptable. She had hoped that he was wrong, but now she saw that he was not. There was a real fear in these people, and it made I am not my father a more important statement than anything else she said.

My dragons will not please everyone, she thought. I will not please everyone.

But Robb Stark…

He had been frightened of her, on the battlefield. He had looked at her with respect. He had spoken to her with deference. That was worse than anything else, because she knew it for the fear it was, and she had wished that she could drive it away.

Not you, she had wanted to say. You’re supposed to understand me.

“Let him in,” she said. “Please wait outside with Grey Worm and Lady Brienne.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Missandei asked.

“Yes,” Dany replied. “I am.”

And she was. She may have been wary when it came to figuring out what the king in the north wanted, but she trusted him. He might want to talk to her about her actions on the battlefield, when she allowed Drogon to burn that caravan and kill those soldiers and camp followers. He might want to talk about her hesitation after the battle when it came time to decide what should happen to the soldiers they took. Those would all be fair conversations, and she was almost grateful that he wanted to have them alone, because she would not feel the need to save face in front of her advisors if she found herself agreeing with him.

If there was one thing she was certain of about Robb Stark, it was her safety when she was with him. The way he spoke of his sisters, the way he spoke of his father. Noble, honorable. It was the opposite of what Dany had learned of Ned Stark as she grew up and heard stories from her brother and from Jorah, but she knew better now how a person’s experience could color their perception, and she believed that Ned Stark was probably somewhere in between. He had risked his marriage to protect her nephew. He had raised Jon Snow as his son despite it being a stain on his reputation, and she thought that spoke well of him. Robb’s admiration of his father's honor spoke well of Robb, too.

She was still standing by the balcony when Robb entered. Missandei cast her one more worried look before the door finally shut, and then they were alone. Dany’s dress blew around her legs in the gentle breeze, and she observed the way that he looked at her. His eyes traveled over her more slowly than they used to. She was sure of it. He allowed his eyes to catch on her dress and her neatened braid and the slight flush in her cheeks. He was smiling softly.

He doesn’t hate me, she realized. He isn’t afraid of me. It was a relief. It was stunning how much a relief it was.  

“You wanted to see me?” she asked. He seemed to remember that he was in her rooms for a purpose, and he fumbled with a letter that he drew out from behind his back, where he had clasped his hands around it.

“From my sister,” he said. “Sansa. It’s rather long. I read it several times before I decided to come to you with it. I know you have been occupied with the surrender of the Lannister army and all that that entails.”

She wondered if that was a veiled insult, but she decided that it wasn’t. She had little enough to do with the army. That had all been handled by Grey Worm and his captains. Tyrion, too, had helped convince a number of his family’s soldiers that Dany would make a better queen than Cersei. Dany was under no illusions: when it came to soldiers, particularly soldiers in this foreign land, she was better as a figurehead with dragons. But Robb didn’t seem to know that. He was earnest when he looked at her. Earnest and concerned.

“Of course,” she said. “Whatever you need. You and Lady Brienne performed a great service for me.”

At the mention of Brienne’s defeat of the Lannister commander, Robb frowned.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

Dany wondered if he would welcome gossip about Lady Brienne and the Kingslayer. She doubted it, but she found herself speaking anyway. Why? She couldn’t understand it. Was she nervous?

“I spoke with Lady Brienne already,” she said. “About her role. I understand that it cost her a lot to do it.”

Robb seemed surprised by her words. Perhaps by her sympathy; she hoped that wasn’t it.

“I’m sure she appreciated your kind words,” he said at last. “It has been a trying time for Lady Brienne, but she’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. I know she’ll recover.”

Dany nodded eagerly. She felt a fool, looking for his approval. She was Daenerys Targaryen, not a child any longer. She didn’t need for anyone to approve of her.

You need the north. You need his alliance. You need the people of Westeros to respect you, and an alliance with Robb Stark is how you’ll get it.

Is that all you need?

Yes. That’s all you need. But is it all you want?

Daario had been a want. She had wanted him, and she had cared for him, and he had fascinated her. She had trusted him, as far as one could trust a man like him. But there had been something missing between them. Was it in she and Robb? She couldn’t yet tell. She hoped it was.

Where had that come from? That hope? What foolish impulse had created it? She thought she might hate it, but she wasn’t sure. She wanted...

She wanted. She wanted something good for herself. Something that her ambitions and her goals could not touch. Daario had been shoved aside, and she wished that there had been another way, but what she wanted and what she needed hadn’t lined up. Would they line up now? Robb was not Daario. Perhaps that was even a good thing. Daario encouraged the worst parts of her. Robb had seen her burn those men, and he had looked…

Afraid. Concerned.

She didn’t need another man who told her only that she was good, or that she was powerful, or that she was right, no matter what she chose. She needed people who would help her. Encourage kindness and fairness and justice. People like Barristan Selmy. People like Jorah Mormont.

People like Robb Stark.

He unfolded the letter and held it out for her to take, and the trust of the act struck her. He was giving her his sister’s letter. The other letters had been summarized. Spoken of. She had known, of course, that she could likely learn of their full contents from Varys, but she hadn’t felt the need. She wanted only as much as he would give her, and she was glad of that deliberation now, because the moment he chose to share the letter with her felt…

It felt important. He handed it over like it wasn’t. That felt important, too.

“What does it say?” she asked him.

I trust you, too.

“My sister…I think I mentioned to you before that my siblings might have played these kinds of pranks when we were children. Writing to me of impossible things in the hopes that I would make a fool of myself. That was my first thought when I read this. But they aren’t those people anymore. They wouldn’t do that. They know how important all this is. But Sansa…she writes that Bran, my brother, has come back to them different. He isn’t the same person he was. Our sister, Arya, she’s different too, apparently, but in a way that’s less…gods.” He laughed a little, ducking his head, and Dany could see the exhaustion in him. What would it be like? To be close enough to him. To reach out and touch him. Soothe his aches and tiredness? She remembered touching Drogo after his battles. Kissing him and running her hands down his muscles. Soothing him. He had closed his eyes to her. Trusted her. Her fingertips ached with a need to brush her thumb across those dark circles under Robb’s eyes. To cup his jaw.

What is wrong with you?

“Take your time,” she said with a smile.

“I know how it sounds,” he said. “I’m trying to make it sound less absurd.”

“Make it as absurd as it needs to be. I hatched dragons from stone on my husband’s funeral pyre. I sat among them and did not burn.” She smiled at his own growing grin. “I can handle a little absurdity.”

Robb’s eyes crinkled a bit at the corners when he smiled, which she liked. His eyes were kind. Warm as they looked at her. Grateful, too. She had set him at ease.

“Bran went beyond the wall,” he said carefully. “And he says that he has become something called the Three Eyed Raven. Sansa isn’t clear what that is. I don’t think she understands it. But whatever he is, he’s managed to give them more information about the Night King.”

“The one with the undead army,” Dany said seriously. Robb understood that she was teasing him a bit, and his grin grew wider.

“Your grace, please don’t take back your promise to try and understand the absurdity. There’s so much more of it in this letter.”

She laughed, surprised with herself.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. Tell me more about the raven with three eyes who has been warning about the king of the dead.”

“I warned you,” Robb said. He was looking at her like…She didn’t know. Like a friend. It felt better than she had expected.

“Are you sure it isn’t a jape?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Robb said. He laughed again, a little helplessly. “I almost wish I could say it was. Or that I thought it was. It would make things easier, but it would also be…I would like to think that they would try something like that again. They’re both so serious now. Well, Jon was always serious.”

“It couldn’t have been easy. Growing up the way he did.”

“No,” Robb admitted. He was looking at her again like she had said something he wanted to hear, and she remembered that she actually could do this. She may not have been as practiced a politician as Tyrion would like, and Meereen had been such a disaster, but she understood how to talk to people. Especially people like Robb Stark, with whom she already had something of a connection. Enough commonalities to make conversation between them simple. “It wasn’t always easy. My mother wasn’t kind to him. She was afraid of him. Of the effect he would have on my claim. Her disdain turned Sansa against him too. Time has changed some things. Neither of them are quite the people they were, and they’re much closer than they used to be, but… I’m sorry.” He ducked his head with a grimace. It might have seemed like a performance on any other man, but Dany had seen enough of men and their performances to disarm her, and she knew that this wasn’t it. “I’m sorry. This isn’t important.”

“It is to me,” Dany said. Too quickly. Robb looked startled. She smiled, and it was her turn to be self-effacing. It was a performance, mostly, from her. Mostly. Less than she wished. “I’ve never had a family. Not like yours. Hearing you talk about it…seeing the way they make you smile…”

Robb’s smile deepened, right on cue. Just as she had meant for it to.

“I wonder sometimes,” he said. “About how you must have lived as a child. If things were different, you could have had siblings. Nieces and nephews, too. You could have had a family. I am sorry you never did.”

She didn’t mention that his father was part of the rebellion that tore her family from her. That had been well established, and their fathers’ choices had nothing to do with this place between them now. It had been left behind them long ago.

“I am as well,” she said graciously. “But I have a family now. My people are my family.”

She thought that Robb wanted to argue with that, from the way he frowned. But he didn’t. He merely looked at her. He had expressive eyes. Blue, light and amused. He said once, offhandedly, that they were the Tully look. Something his mother had given him. She liked them. She liked a lot of things about him. Damn Varys.

“The truth is that I need your help,” he said. He looked at her with those eyes she liked so much, from behind the curly reddish-brown hair she liked as well. He kept talking about wanting to cut it shorter again. The first time he mentioned it, she nearly told him to leave it, before she stopped herself, refusing to mention that she liked it long on him. She liked how soft it looked. She liked the soft way he was looking at her now, with all that intensity directed her way.

“I need your help,” he had said. She was weak for those words. She was weak for those words from him especially. From a person she cared for. Was this too much? Was this too fast? Did he know her weaknesses? Was he playing on them? Had his advisors been at him about marriage and about making her fall for him? She could not tell. It made her uncomfortable to wonder. It made her worry to wonder.

“With what?” she asked.

“Jon and Bran both need to speak with you,” he said. “Because I can think of no other way to prove to you that what I tell you is true.”

“Have I given you any indication that I don’t believe you?”

“No. But what I would be asking…” He hesitated, and she saw some of the fear that she had dreaded to see. Yes, he still had some fear of her. He hid it well, but it was there, and it made her stomach clench with disappointment. Disappointment in what? In him? In herself? She could hardly tell. She only knew that she didn’t like it.

“What are you asking, Robb?” she asked. He seemed surprised, perhaps by her direct address of him. But she would not be played or made a fool. If he wanted something from her, he would have to ask directly.

“Cersei,” he said slowly. “Will keep. She has locked herself in her castle. She has barricaded herself behind the city’s walls. She will happily stay there until you are prepared to face her. With all the allies you need.” He had an apologetic lilt to his tone, and Dany knew what that meant. He was bargaining. He could not threaten to take back what had not officially been promised, but he could threaten not to give it to her. “The Night King. The army of the dead. Those won’t wait. By the time you take Kings Landing, they’ll have wiped out the north, and they will continue to you. Perhaps you’ll be lucky, and you can take the city with minimal losses. But perhaps not. Either way, the army of the dead will wipe out the rest unless we stop it.”

“The help you mean to ask is for me to abandon my throne to a madwoman,” Dany pointed out.

“No,” Robb said. “The help I mean to ask is for you to listen to my brothers. They both have seen this monster with their own eyes. Bran has knowledge of it that no one else does. I’m not asking anything of you until you have spoken to them. Until you have seen for yourself.”

“And if I don’t see it?” Dany asked.

“Then I will have lost,” Robb admitted. He had an exhausted set to his mouth, but he flashed half a smile. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Dany looked at him. She tried to see a lie. She knew better than to trust every man who smiled at her, and she knew better than to trust pretty men, and she knew better than to trust people who wanted things from her. But being wary did not have to mean distrusting everyone, and Robb…

She would not give up her throne for him. But she could hear him out. She could speak to his brothers. Cersei Lannister may have been comfortable ignoring threats to her realm, but Dany would not be that sort of queen. If there was a chance that the Starks were right…

“The two of us,” she said. “We can go. We can go tomorrow. Drogon can get us there. I told you I wanted to see how fast they could fly.”

Robb looked slightly pale at the thought, and Dany waited, one eyebrow raised. If this is what you want, her posture said, then we will be doing it my way. Traveling all the way north would take too long otherwise, and he would have to be much madder than he seemed if he thought to harm her when alone with her and one of her dragons.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” he asked. “Will they allow it?”

“If by ‘they’ you mean my advisors, I hadn’t intended to tell them,” Dany said. “Only Missandei. She can inform the others when we’ve gone.” She watched his reaction. His eyes had gone to the window. She imagined he was scanning for signs of the dragons outside. Her smile widened. “Do you trust me?” she asked. His eyes went back to hers. He was more serious than she expected.

“I do,” he said. It was not said with hesitation, but there was something guarded in him anyway. “Perhaps that’s a foolish answer, but I do.”

“Why would it be foolish?”

“Am I not your prisoner?” Robb pointed out. Dany smiled again.

“Only technically,” she pointed out. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

“I noticed.”

“I learned not to trust people. You can leave at any time, but you will be followed, and shadowed, until you get back north. And you won’t have your alliance. I wouldn’t call that a prisoner.”

“No. Maybe not. Davos is convinced you wouldn’t let us leave.”

“Davos is convinced. And you?”

“I hadn’t decided. I learned not to trust people too. I do trust you. But trust…”

He shook his head. Rueful. She knew he was thinking of that wedding again. She longed to move closer to him. She didn’t.

“Yes,” she said. “I know what trust can do. And yet I trust you.”

Robb nodded.

“I’ll ride with you,” he said. “If you think Drogon will let me.”

“If I’m with you, he will,” Dany promised.

“Not tomorrow. The day after. We should prepare. And I should send a raven.”

“Done,” Dany said. She felt…

Like a girl, she realized. Like a child. Preparing to sneak out. Getting into mischief. It wasn’t something she’d ever had the luxury of doing. She could imagine herself younger. Giggling with her brother over some prank they were pulling on the castle guard. Perhaps it would be a Kingsguard. Arthur Dayne. Perhaps even Jaime Lannister. Young and unsullied by the murder of her father. Would he have indulged them? Chased them around? Played with them? She wondered what he had done with his own children when they grew up in front of him. Belonging to his sister and her husband in name. She wondered if his children had laughed and played the way Robb and his siblings had. What could it have been like, if she had been afforded the same opportunity?

I am not that girl, she reminded herself. I am this woman. This is an important undertaking. It is the future of the realm. We aren’t sneaking out to do mischief. We’re leaving because our advisors would otherwise slow things down, and I don’t want to waste any more time.

Still. What could the harm be in indulging herself, just a little?

“Brienne won’t be happy with me,” Robb said. He was amused, too. She could see the mirth behind his eyes, and the way he seemed giddy with the possibility. “She’ll probably take it as a personal failing that I managed to slip away from her.”

“Order her to guard the Kingslayer in your absence,” Dany said dryly. “Perhaps she’ll thank you for it.”

“No, but he will,” Robb laughed. He looked as young as she felt.

The suddenness of want stole over her. She couldn’t wait to show him what it was like to fly.

Chapter Text

Arya didn’t even need to use the faces to remain unseen by the people she wanted to stay hidden from, but it was easier when she did. No one looked twice at serving girls or soldiers. Guard uniforms were less exciting than drapery to important people. Scullery maids were the easiest, especially ones who weren’t pretty or interesting. There were men who would still try it, of course, but fewer of them, and they were often easier to take down. It was less of a distraction. Arya could scrub at floors all day, and she’d learn everything from people too stupid to pay her any attention.

She was glad that she didn’t need Littlefinger’s face anymore. He was an unpleasant man to pretend to be. The northern lords had finally accepted that he was a snake, and Yohn Royce had denounced him publicly and revoked his title or whatever it was they had to do to take a lord down a bit. The Blackfish did his job in the Vale, and all those lords cast votes to oust him.

Of course, Lord Baelish had conveniently disappeared in the dead of night, and no one knew where to find him.

He’ll turn up, they all said. Sansa assured them that they would send people to hunt him down. Jon had looked uncomfortable with all the lying, but he always looked uncomfortable lately, so no one thought anything of it. Arya still had the face, because she never liked to get rid of a useful tool, but she was glad to keep it shoved in the bottom of the bag where it belonged.

There were better faces to wear. Littlefinger drew too much attention, and Arya wanted to blend. She liked hearing gossip. Most of it was about Sansa and Jon and Robb, because they were the lords and the lady, and that was who servants always gossiped about. There were smaller stories playing out throughout the castle, and they might not be important stories, but Arya liked them more. A maid named Tansy thought some northern lord was going to marry her now that his wife had died of a winter chill. A stablehand named Dil was marrying a goatherd named Alys because they were friends who couldn’t marry the people they were really in love with, which seemed like a neat solution all around. People talked about Jon’s friends Sam and Gilly, too, and how she was a wildling, and all these rumors that Arya didn’t like listening to about where her boy came from.

Actually, there were a lot of rumors Arya didn’t like hearing. She avoided the servants who had worked in the castle when Ramsay Bolton was around, because the first time she heard one of the stories they told about what he’d done to Sansa, Arya had to retreat to her room so she could keep herself from crying. It was just a surprise, was all. She wasn’t expecting to hear it. After that, she avoided any mention of it. Sansa hadn’t told her anything like that, and if Sansa wanted her to know, Sansa would have told her.

The wildlings talked about Jon, too. Those rumors were easier to listen to, though she still felt a squirming awkwardness when they talked about Jon’s wildling lady and her red hair and her dying at the hands of some other Crow. She didn’t like hearing about his death, either, but she liked how it had made all the wildlings think he was important. Not that they wouldn’t have followed him anyway, but she couldn’t fault their logic. She’d follow the man who got brought back to life too, probably.

When she had her faces on, she could watch anybody. And it wasn’t like she meant to spy on Jon and Sansa. But, well. They were her family. She was curious. It was no more than what she would have done when she and Bran were children, always sneaking around in the walls and spying. Their family had been bigger, then. There were more of them. But they had also been way less interesting.

She knew why Sansa was acting weird. She knew that Sansa was trying to stop being so weird, and she’d even gotten better at being more civil to Jon without looking at him all moonily. She didn’t avoid him or snap at him. She just acted all polite and distant and smiled like a normal person. Jon still seemed a bit hurt by it, but at least he didn’t look anymore like he’d been slapped, so that was an improvement.

The thing Jon did do was watch Sansa. Not in such an odd way, Arya didn’t think. But he always looked at her like he was trying to figure something out. And he always looked concerned for her. Not just like it was because he noticed her being weird around him, but like he was worried about her all the time. How much did he know about what Sansa had gone through? He didn’t show it when he was with her. When he was with her, he was blank and kind, but when he was watching her, he was different.

It wasn’t like Arya understood. Or wanted to understand. Or wanted to know, even. Actually, she’d rather just ignore the whole thing and pretend it wasn’t happening, but it wasn’t her to ignore something that was making her family unhappy.

So she watched. She listened. She learned.

Maybe it was disgusting, but Arya didn’t really think like that anymore. Everything was different for everybody. She’d met too many people and heard too many of their stories to judge people for the things they didn’t choose to feel. She hadn’t needed Sansa's apologies in the courtyard that day when she’d called Arya a lady and said she was sorry for the way she used to think about things like that. But Arya had appreciated it anyway. It was nice to know that Sansa wanted to be friends like they were when they were really young and Sansa thought Arya would be another little lady just like her. It was nice that Sansa understood better now too how people were just different from each other, and how that was fine.

There wasn’t any right or wrong way to think or be as long as you weren’t hurting anybody with it, and that was why the weirdness with Sansa and Jon didn’t bother Arya so much. Not that it didn’t bother her. But it bothered her less than it would have before. She’d learned a lot on her journey, and she knew now how rare it was for people to be happy the way her family was when they were growing up. Especially in these times, with all the wars and the death, people weren’t having an easy time of it. Everyone was dying. Everyone was starving. Miserable. Getting hurt and killed in some fancy lord’s war that had nothing do with them. She saw it everywhere, and now it seemed like the right thing, for people to go after those bits of happiness that they could find. And if Jon and Sansa made each other happy…well, why not?

She could see it, was the thing. She was good now at figuring things out like that. Answering why questions for herself. She knew they didn’t know each other much when they were growing up. Sansa and Jon were as close to strangers as they could have possibly been while they were living in the same castle. Sansa was too much of a lady, and Catelyn was too watchful. Arya was good at sneaking around it, but Sansa hadn’t even wanted to. She’d wanted to make their mother happy, and that meant avoiding Jon and being a proper little lady and whatever else. Theon was probably more a brother to Sansa than Jon ever had been, and Theon used to talk about marrying her. Jon and Sansa almost never spoke. They never spent any real time together, especially not just the two of them. It must have been a surprise to meet each other again and realize they were strangers. Probably even more surprising when they realized they were strangers who already loved each other.

Sansa still thought it was Cersei’s fault somehow, like Cersei had infected her with a desire to fuck her brother, but Arya didn’t think that was it. First of all, because that was ridiculous, and that wasn’t how things worked. But also because Sansa wasn’t anything like Cersei at all, and she wasn’t like Littlefinger, and she wasn’t like Ramsay Bolton either. She wore those masks sometimes in the same way Arya wore her faces, because it was easier to hide than let your true face be shown. Arya knew how that felt. But that didn’t mean she was those faces. It meant that she wanted to hide. Sansa wanted to hide because she was afraid. Arya understood that, as well. And fear didn’t make Sansa the same as Cersei.

Cersei was afraid, too. Arya hadn’t seen the queen in years, but she understood her better now. She knew what it was like to be afraid, and she knew that fear could turn men and women evil, and she knew that understanding those fears didn’t mean excusing what those fears made people do. Things were more complicated than she used to think they were, and maybe that was part of why it didn’t bother her so much, too.

It wasn’t anything nearly so bad as Sansa seemed to think, anyway. It was very…maybe not understandable. But it followed. Arya could follow it. She could see where it started and she could see where it led, and there was nothing in that line was broken or twisted, whatever Sansa thought.

And Jon. Jon was harder to read. He always had been, but he’d become better at hiding things than he used to be. He’d had to learn. She knew that without having to ask. He was wary of things, too. Keeping things closed up tight because he didn’t trust people the way he used to. That was true of all of them except maybe Bran, she thought. All of them had come back a bit more bitter than they had been before they left Winterfell. Meeting each other again was having to relearn everything. Even Jon, who she had always known best, was different. He was much more difficult to figure out.

Sometimes she wished he was more difficult to figure out. Because he watched Sansa, and she finally had to acknowledge that she knew why.

“It’s just weird, isn’t it?” she asked. Bran was staring at her. He had this insufferable, patient look on his face that reminded Arya too much of their mother whenever Arya got into some mischief and was trying to explain her way out.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“You don’t just know what I’m talking about?” Arya asked. Bran sighed. A long, irritated sound. He was always doing that. Arya liked it because it was the most emotion he usually showed.  He kept saying he wasn’t Bran anymore. But whoever he was now, he thought Arya was very annoying. It made him seem more Bran. Arya knew it was stupid to hope, but she couldn’t help it: she hoped maybe the more he got annoyed with her, the more he would remember her, and the more he would remember himself.

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said patiently, and for a second it was like he was seeing into her thoughts, though of course he was just talking about her being annoyed that he couldn’t.

“More shit powers,” Arya pointed out with exaggerated sorrow. “I’m talking about Jon and Sansa. They’re weird. They’re weird about each other. It’d be weird if they did anything about it, but I almost think I would rather have it be weird than miserable. Which is what it is now. All that looking after each other. Acting like they’re not doing it. Acting like they don’t care at all about each other because they’re too nervous to show too much. I thought it was just Sansa at first, but it isn’t. It’s Jon, too. They’re both doing it. Seems like they might as well stop and just admit it to themselves. And maybe there’s a reason, anyway. Maybe there’s a reason they found out the way they did, when they did, that they aren’t brother and sister really.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Bran said. Arya grinned and leaned against the wall beside him, acting casual because she thought it would annoy him more. She wanted him to be annoyed. She was annoyed with him.

“I want you to tell me if it’s weird.”

“That isn’t something I can answer for you.”

“Sure you can. Listen. It’s not like I don’t think it’s odd. It’s odd for certain. But if they…”

“What is the point of this?” Bran asked. Arya couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I just want to know if it’s good or bad.”

“Arya,” Bran sighed. He was trying to sound all dignified about it, too, but he sounded like a kid again, and Arya clung to that with a kind of savage hope.

“I just mean, will they be good for each other? Will they make each other happy? I know you think we’re all going to perish horribly in the war against the dead…”

“I don’t think that,” Bran said. “I said we need to be prepared for…”

“But if we do somehow survive…they’re my family. I want them to be happy. They aren’t happy like this. They’re both so afraid of each other, and all they want to do is spend their time together. There shouldn’t be anything bad in that. Well, maybe a little bit bad. But like a normal amount of bad, not...”

“Yes,” Bran blurted. He had his eyes closed. She couldn’t tell if he was doing some weird future-seeing thing or just annoyed with her. Either way, he opened his eyes after and met hers. He didn’t look annoyed, but he felt annoyed, and she grinned wider.

“Yes,” she repeated.

“If they survive, yes. It would make them happy. I don’t know what else you want from me.”

“That was enough,” Arya said. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. He looked more annoyed than ever. He very stubbornly refused to wipe it off, but she could tell he wanted to. “Was that so hard?”

He glared at her. He wanted to say something, she could tell. Tell her off or remind her that it didn’t work that way or something. But he knew engaging with her would only make it worse. And, well, he was right about that, at least.

When she saw Sansa again, a few hours later, it was easier to read it clearly.

Sansa still woke in the night from nightmares about what she had suffered. She kept her scarred skin hidden away from everyone but her handmaids, who gossiped about it the way they gossiped about everything else, sad and sorry for her. And Jon didn’t quite fear the same things, but he woke shaking and cold most nights, and his own skin had the evidence of his death still etched into it. They both were creatures of discomfort, but it was different when they were together. They were comfortable then. They were happy then. Or they could be, anyway, if they stopped worrying their stupid heads about all the things they had been worrying about.

Sansa didn’t seem very happy when Arya saw her. She was holding a letter when Arya entered the office, and she shook it in Arya’s direction

“A dragon!” she said, practically yelling in frustration, like it was a continuation of a conversation she and Arya had been having before.

“What about a dragon?” Arya asked with an indulgent smile, snapping the letter away from Sansa before Sansa could stop her.

The letter was from Robb, and it did indeed mention a dragon almost immediately. She knew why Sansa was angry—taking the dragon queen and her dragon on a trip to the north in an impulsive bit of sneaking was very Robb of him—but she couldn’t think of anything except for the fact that she would be seeing Robb again soon.

She could remember that horrible wedding. Outside, with The Hound, knowing that it was hopeless but wanting to go in anyway because that was her brother. That had been another missed opportunity at rescue, hadn’t it? If only The Hound had waited to make sure. Or if they had seen the Blackfish squirreling Robb away before the Freys spotted him. She could have gone with him. She could have been with Robb all this time. What would that have been like?

“He’s coming here,” she breathed. Sansa’s anger deflated quickly. Her smile was a bit indulgent and a bit sad, all at once. She still treated Arya like a child sometimes. Less than Jon did, and probably less than Robb would, but sometimes she didn’t seem like she could help it. This was one of those times.

“He is,” she said. “On a dragon.”

“You’re trying to make that sound like a bad thing, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard,” Arya pointed out. Sansa sighed and snatched the letter back.

“Jon would agree with me,” she said. “He should have been given more advance notice. She’s his aunt. What if he’s not ready to meet her?”

“Jon would agree with you,” Arya agreed blithely. “But only because Jon agrees with you about everything. You know he doesn’t mind about things for himself.”

Sansa looked surprised by the comment, and she frowned in Arya’s direction as if trying to figure out if Arya was joking or not. Arya’s expression was entirely innocent, but Sansa was too savvy to believe even her best lies, most of the time. Whether she believed Arya or not, she didn’t say anything. She looked like she might be too nervous to. She always dodged any sort of conversation about it.

“I should tell him,” she said.

“You should,” Arya agreed. Sansa hesitated, and Arya thought about telling her what Bran had said. No, that was too much. Sansa wasn’t ready to talk about that. Arya didn’t need any stupid raven powers to tell her that. “I’m sure it won’t be so terrible, Sansa. It’s just Robb and one woman. How bad could it be?”

“Robb and one woman?” Sansa asked pointedly. Wry, and just slightly bitter. Arya couldn’t help but laugh.

“All right,” she said. “Robb and one woman can do a bit of damage. But what are the odds of that happening twice?”

“Gods, shut up,” Sansa muttered, and she turned and stalked away, leaving Arya laughing behind her.

Chapter Text

The morning was clear enough that the guards were able to warn of the approaching dragons when they were still quite far away. The whole castle had been anticipating the arrival since the sun came up, and the guards—normally such staid northern soldiers—were nearly giddy when they made the announcement. Sansa, Jon, and Arya all hurried up to the walls to watch.

They’d asked Bran if he wanted to come, but Bran’s answer had been, “I’ve seen them already,” in a tone that seemed less than impressed. Arya had laughed loudly, breaking the tension, and she was still grinning to herself about it even as they watched the impossible shape of the dragons fly closer.

Sansa hadn’t been able to laugh. She was too frightened for that. Daenerys Targaryen was a powerful woman. Three dragons, and the apparent worshipful devotion of armies from across the sea. That was all Sansa knew about her, and it was a worrying glimpse. Robb knew her, or claimed to in his letters. Brienne never claimed anything quite so lofty, though she had written of the dragon queen’s kindness in the past. Jaime’s last letter mentioned that he hadn’t yet spoken to Daenerys, but that Tyrion thought she was a queen worth following. Jaime also seemed to think Daenerys would execute him once he was well enough that she could make a show of it, so that didn’t speak particularly well of her, Sansa didn’t think, even if Jaime did kill her father. Perhaps Daenerys would benefit from hearing Bran’s thoughts on forgiveness and understanding, too.

Sansa wanted to trust her brother’s judgement, and she wanted to trust Tyrion’s, too. But it was an enormous leap. It was no small thing to trust someone based on the words of others, and she had been burned too many times. She had trusted Littlefinger because he was her mother’s friend. She had trusted Cersei because Cersei was the queen. She had trusted Aunt Lysa because Aunt Lysa was her mother’s sister, and surely she would keep Sansa safe. People showed themselves to her, over and over, revealing their true selves beneath their pretty painted faces, and still Sansa had trusted until it was finally beaten out of her soundly enough.

You trusted Jon because he was your brother, and that didn’t go wrong.

She looked at Jon. He was gazing out at the dragons as they approached. His expression was impossible to decipher, as his expressions often were. She wondered if he felt they could trust Daenerys. His aunt. His family.

She’d heard, of course, plenty of rumors about the dragon queen's beauty. Brienne had described her as pleasing to look at, which, considering the source, was practically a full poem in praise of her good looks. Jaime had made some comment in his letter about other men being swayed by her beauty, but I wasted my life on a beautiful woman with a fondness for fire, and I am in no danger of making that mistake a second time. But it wasn’t Jaime she was concerned about, and it certainly wasn’t Brienne; Robb had already given his heart once unwisely to a beautiful woman, and he had lost everything for love of her.

I trust Robb, she told herself, every time she started to worry. I trust Robb. He won’t make those same mistakes. He knows better now.

But it was an easy thing to tell herself. It was a less easy thing to believe it. Less easy, too, to swallow back her fear in front of her siblings and her cousin, especially when Jon and Arya watched her so carefully. They knew she was worried about Robb. She had been a prisoner in a hostile court once, and so maybe it was inevitable that she would be concerned about Robb’s position now. But it wasn’t just Robb’s position that frightened her. She kept thinking of last time. Last time, when he abandoned her. Last time, when her mother had to set Jaime free and betray her own army because Robb wouldn’t risk the wrath of the northern lords to take the chance to save her. Her. His sister. He said, all through their childhood—he promised—that he would protect her. When she was frightened of storms. When Old Nan told too many ghost stories. When they played at knights and maidens in the wood. She wasn’t a child anymore, but those promises of childhood were what kept her hoping in Kings Landing. He promised. He promised. He will come for me and protect me. He’ll kill all of you.

But he hadn’t. It had been a double blow: the realization that he would not give up Jaime Lannister for her safety followed almost immediately by the news of the Red Wedding. He had been too dead to hate for long. Too dead to blame. She had loved and missed him too much to dwell on it and resent it properly.

But now…

It was just like last time. Last time, when he abandoned Sansa as lost and then gave up his crown for love of a woman he had only just met.

It isn’t the same. He won’t make the same mistakes. She told herself as much over and over as they waited, but she couldn’t stop it completely. Littlefinger used to always tell her to expect the worst. Think of the worst reason a person would have for doing something, and assume that was the truth. She hadn’t taken the advice to heart when it was him she was going up against, though she should have, because it was good advice.

What was the worst reason she could think of for Robb to align himself with Daenerys Targaryen? What was the worst reason she could think of for Robb to take Daenerys here, on the back of a dragon, with no one else accompanying them?

He fancies himself in love again, and he wants to show her the north. Her new land. That’s the worst reason.

An alliance would be good against Cersei. It would be good against the dead. Bran said that they needed her, and Robb had gotten her. But had he bent the knee? Would he bend the knee? Were they to be absorbed back into Westeros after all? And what would become of Sansa? Would she be married off to strengthen the alliance to one of the dragon queen’s people? Re-married to Tyrion, perhaps? Or given to someone else they needed stronger bonds with?

If he was in love, would he allow it? He’d allowed his love of a woman to cloud his love for his sisters before. She could not say with confidence that he wouldn’t do it again.

The dragons approached, and Sansa knew that it didn’t matter why. It didn’t matter what he had done. It didn’t even matter what would happen to her in the future. They had no chance against the dragon queen. Maybe that was why.

The size of the dragons, even so far out…it would be impossible to face a woman with one of those beasts. Three of them? They would stand no chance. Cersei had no dragons and they were still perhaps outmatched by her. Ramsay Bolton had only had dogs, and Sansa still woke sobbing in the night when she dreamed of him. It would be utter madness to try and go against dragons.

If bringing the dragons to Winterfell was meant to be a reminder of that impossible superiority, Daenerys had already made her point, and she hadn’t even landed yet.

“We should be in the courtyard to greet them,” Jon said, and Sansa nodded. She didn’t want to be up on the walls when the dragons approached, anyway. Not that that was at all logical; everyone knew the story of Harrenhal. Everyone knew what little good stone walls and stone keeps were against dragonfire. But her fears were not always the rational kind, and she was afraid.

She saw the expressions on the faces of the others as she and Arya and Jon walked down the stairs and into the courtyard. Sandor Clegane was glowering up at the sky. Bran had his eyes closed, still apparently disinterested. Beric and his men were eager, watching the sky for the shape of the creatures. Most of the rest were a mix of terrified and hopeful. Sansa could understand. It wasn’t every day that myths came to life, and even frightening myths could also be exciting ones. Arya’s expression was hopeful, too, though Sansa knew that had less to do with the dragons and more to do with the fact that Robb was being carried by one of them.

Jon…Jon was still impossible to read. He stood close beside her, hunched in his Stark cloak, with his Stark hair and Stark beard untamed, a riot of inky black. It felt purposeful, like a show of allegiance he had chosen to make, though she wasn’t even sure if that was something he would do. He caught her looking at him, and he forced a smile that made her stomach ache.

The dragons could be heard before they could be seen from the courtyard. There were murmurs from the gathered watchers, who craned their necks to try and see above the walls. Then one of them flew overhead, fast and brilliant in the sunlight, and its wings sent a brutal gust of wind down among them, swirling their cloaks and heavy skirts and sending hay skittering across the mud. There was shrieking, and there was laughter, too, especially from the children. A few people cheered. Sansa couldn’t. Her face was a frozen mask. Jon’s hand skimmed down her arm once, comforting. His face was a mask, too, while Arya laughed and whooped with the rest of them. The other dragons were not far behind, and their wings made heavy sounds that shook the air as they hovered and landed somewhere out of sight, beyond the gates. A guard called down that the king and the dragon queen had dismounted the dragon and were now approaching. Sansa nodded. The gates began to open.

Robb was walking towards them. The dragons remained in the snowy plain behind them, massive and alert. The cheering got louder, but it wasn’t only cheers. Sansa saw discontent as well as excitement. She saw nervous grumbling as much as she saw awe. Robb was smiling, windblown and handsome. He wasn’t wearing his crown. Daenerys was on his arm. Both of them looked young, giddy. Beautiful.

She was beautiful, the dragon queen. She had the Targaryen hair that Sansa used to dream about, white and shimmering in the sunlight. Her pale cheeks were prettily pink from the cold, and her hair was dishevelled from the wind, but she looked young and light and unburdened. She made Sansa feel old before her time. She made Sansa feel too tall, too awkward, too serious.

Yes, for once the rumors had the right of it. The dragon queen was beautiful, and Sansa’s brother looked as if he knew it. Walking beside her, he looked at her often. He was laughing, amused by something that had happened on their flight. Only when his eyes traveled to the gate did his smile fade, replaced by something much softer.

Arya had already begun to run. She looked like a child again, sprinting out through the gates. Propriety said they should stand in formation until the northern king and the dragon queen were within Winterfell to be received properly, but Arya had never had much use for propriety, and it made Sansa smile at last to watch her. It looked just like how it used to when father and the boys would come back from hunting. Arya had always wanted to go, but she was never allowed. She would lurk around the gates like an abandoned pup, waiting until they were back so that she could tackle the first one to dismount his horse, always wanting to hear about who had shot what and who had done the best job, mostly so that she could claim that she would have done better.

Robb caught Arya in his arms just as he would have then. He spun her around. His eyes were squeezed shut. He was crying. Arya was, too. Arya. Sansa controlled the lump in her own throat by remembering that they were not safe just because Robb thought they were.

She thought of Kings Landing. She thought of how she had longed for him to hug her like that. For him to stride through the city and spin her around and kill the Kingsguard who had beaten her and stripped her and humiliated her. She thought of his secret, hurried wedding to the woman he loved. She thought of his reluctance to risk the war for Sansa but his haste to throw away everything for Talisa. She thought of how safe she had felt in Winterfell again, reclaimed and widowed and left alone, secure in the knowledge that her brothers would not try to marry her off again. She thought of how unsafe she felt now. Her mask did not slip.

At last, Robb put Arya back on her feet and urged her inside the walls so that he could introduce Daenerys properly. The entire household was waiting. The murmuring had grown more quiet as everyone prepared to receive her, and it faded entirely once Robb was back within their walls. They were watching her, Sansa. She would set the tone. They could not be allowed to see anything of her doubts from her.

Robb led the way, and he pulled Sansa into a hug. Warm and lighter than he had seemed when he left. Less burdened. More whole. The time away had done him good, and it was terrifying. What had made him whole again? It was happening just like last time.

Robb moved on to hug Jon, mussing his hair when he did so, which made Jon laugh, though the tension still had not left him. Then Robb stooped to hug Bran as well. Fierce and tight. Bran didn’t bother to return the gesture, instead choosing to gaze at the dragon queen blankly. Arya sighed and cleared her throat. Her eyes bulged out when Bran looked at her. Bran’s eyes narrowed in a way that was almost a glare, but he put one hand on Robb’s back in a lazy gesture to return the embrace.

“We have much to discuss,” he said, in what might have been an attempt at a friendly tone. Arya sighed even more loudly.

“Bran’s a bit odd now,” she said to Robb. “Don’t mind him.” She nudged him with her hip, eyebrows raised to remind him, as he stared down at Bran’s blank face, that he was meant to be making introductions, not just hugging his family and leaving Daenerys waiting behind him.

He did introduce her then, and there was more nervousness coiling in Sansa’s stomach. There was a real warmth in his eyes and in his tone when he brought her forward with his arm outstretched.

It happened again, she thought. She knew.

Daenerys was stiff and formal and clearly nervous, and Sansa’s address to welcome her was the same. It should have made Sansa feel more at ease to know that Daenerys was as discomfited by all this as she was, but it didn’t. It made her feel instead sick, her nerves and her bitterness bubbling over from behind the wall where she thought they had been constrained.

Please, she thought. Not again.

Daenerys was still holding on to Robb’s arm, like a courting girl, and Sansa could not stop staring at her fingers. Graceful and pale, laid gently against the leather.

He will be hers, she thought. He will be hers, and he will give her everything she wants from him, and we will lose the war again. We will lose our home again. You will be married off to Tyrion. They will take you. You will have no choice. You will have no power to refuse them. They will call you a selfish little girl if you try to fight back.

“I hope you appreciate this,” Robb was saying to Jon. Jocular and kind as always, looking down at his queen with a small smile. “Because her advisors are going to be furious with us. And Brienne, of course.”

“You left Brienne there?” Sansa asked.

“She will be perfectly safe,” Daenerys promised. “She and Davos both. Lady Brienne has earned quite a reputation among my people. They have enjoyed watching her spar with the best of my men. I’m happy to report her wins outweigh her losses.”

Sansa was relieved to hear that, and a bit relieved to hear the fond way that Daenerys spoke. She had been nervous, since the battle, since the display on the battlefield that both Robb and Tyrion had written about. Not that either man was very detailed in their descriptions of what had happened, but even their sparseness spoke of a scene that Daenerys would not have liked, if she meant to make the Kingslayer look like a monster defeated and not like a tragic figure coming close to dying in the arms of a woman who loved him.

“I suppose I should expect an angry letter from Tyrion soon,” she managed to say. Her polite mask was back. “Though dragons must fly a bit faster than ravens. Did you have to stop anywhere overnight?”

Robb told the story of the small holdfast they had commandeered for the night, and the enthusiasm and the mingled terror of the minor lord who had possession of it. Sansa found herself smiling and nodding along at all the right moments, but she wasn’t able, afterward, to say anything of what the conversation had been about. It’s happening again was all she could think. Over and over. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. She wanted to tell herself to stop. She wanted to tell herself that Robb would never, that he knew better this time. But she couldn’t stop looking at the dragon queen’s hand on his arm.

“Of course,” Daenerys suddenly said in response to something that Sansa hadn’t heard. Something Arya had said, judging by the way Daenerys was smiling at her. Jon’s hand was on Sansa’s back. When had that happened? Had he noticed, too? She glanced at him and saw that he was already looking at her. He was plainly concerned.

“Follow me,” Daenerys said. “He’ll be well behaved as long as I’m with you.” She began to lead the way, with Arya following eagerly. Sansa balked when she realized what they were going to do, but she didn’t know how to put a stop to it without causing a scene. And the thing with Arya—the thing that had always been true about Arya—was that she would double down on anything if she believed you didn’t want her to do it. She hated to be told what to do.

So Sansa swallowed her fear. Jon’s hand was light on her back, still, a bit of guiding pressure. Robb was looking at her oddly. She knew that he wanted to ask if she was all right. She thought she would scream at him if he did. He didn’t; he turned to follow Daenerys.

“Sansa,” Jon was saying. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. You can stay right here.”

“No,” Sansa said. “You should go. You should meet her. She hasn’t even…”

“We already spoke, Sansa,” Jon said. “She was very kind. She called me nephew, remember?” He moved his hand higher, to the back of her neck, and it was a comfort to feel the slight squeeze of his chilled glove against her overheated skin. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Sansa admitted. She stared after Robb. They were walking to see the dragon, and half the citizens of Winterfell were following, wanting to see. Curious and frightened and excited. She couldn’t stay behind. They would think her craven if she didn’t. They would think her weak and quailing, or perhaps they would know that she didn’t trust. She started forward, and Jon’s hand dropped away. He followed her, came up alongside her. He offered her his arm, and she took it gratefully, feeling less shaky and less obviously nervous with his support.

“It took Robb safely all the way here,” Jon pointed out. “It’s all right. It won’t hurt us.”

The crowd parted for she and Jon as they walked. Her hands were wrapped tightly around his arm. She hoped he could not tell how scared she was, and how off-balanced.

By the time they caught up to Robb and the others, Daenerys was already standing out in front, holding up her hand so that the massive dragon could press its nose up against her fingers like an overlarge kitten. Arya laughed giddily, and more and more she sounded like a child, and Sansa felt that she was the only one left who wasn’t. The only one who couldn’t go back to the way she was before.

She released Jon and urged him forward, and he cast one more look back at her, brow furrowed. She smiled at him, trying to make it full and real to convince him she was all right.

Arya was talking with excitement to Robb, asking him how it felt to fly. Jon was approaching, looking nervous as he got closer to the dragon. His house sigil. The fact made Sansa even more discomfited. She was still quite a ways back. She couldn’t make herself get any closer. It was enormous, the dragon. When Robb’s letter said they would be riding it, she hadn’t known what to expect. But this…

Daenerys was talking to Jon. There was a pride and an assurance in her that Sansa envied. Daenerys knew exactly who she was. She was a woman with three dragons and an army. What did she have to fear? Her hand was on Jon's arm, too. Smiling at him. Claiming him as a nephew. She was so small and pretty. She didn’t tower over him the way Sansa did. She didn’t have any trouble smiling like she meant it. She was lovely. A lovely little bird, just like Sansa had been once, except Daenerys was a falcon or an eagle. Something with claws and a sharp beak that she could use to defend herself. Sansa felt like a hapless gull beside her.

Daenerys turned and looked at Sansa, and she smiled. Sansa returned the smile, though she could feel that it was false on her face. Daenerys excused herself and moved back towards Sansa as Robb and Arya remained close to the dragon. Sansa’s fear made her body tense, her muscles rigid. She was glad that they had kept Ghost in the kennel for this, because he always responded to her nerves and would not like her fear now, and yet she wished for him beside her. She would feel so much safer with her fingers buried in his fur.

“It took me a long time to gain control of my children,” Daenerys said in greeting. “But I’ve tamed them now.”

“How sure are you?” Sansa wondered.

“My advisors tell me that I need the northern alliance if I am to succeed in taking back my family’s seat. And now there is an army of the undead, and a king of the undead, and there is not much hope of succeeding if my northern allies are lost. And my family is here. My brother’s son.” She smiled warmly, and she drew her arm through Sansa’s. Her smile was calm, and Sansa felt like a child. She was so afraid. “I am quite sure. We wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

Sansa allowed Daenerys to lead her forward, towards the dragon. Past Jon, who made a discontented noise and started forward before Daenerys shushed him and warned that he should not startle Drogon. Jon froze in place instantly as Sansa and Daenerys continued smoothly by. Does she perhaps want to kill me? Sansa wondered. It turned her spine to steel. Or does she want to frighten me? She won’t find that as easy as it was. Others got here first.

She stepped up to the dragon. Daenerys was beside her, smiling. Her arm was strong for someone so small and slight. She stuck out her hand, her palm lightly curled, and she arched her eyebrows at Sansa to indicate that she should do the same.

“Oh, gods,” Sansa murmured, but she did it anyway. Her people were watching, and Daenerys, and Jon, and she would not show her fear before them. The dragon moved slowly, its massive head raising and inching towards she and Daenerys before it finally bumped up against the dragon queen's palm. Daenerys pulled her hand back, just a bit, so that the dragon would move with her. Then her hand was level with Sansa’s, and the dragon’s nose bumped up against palm.

It was warm, which she supposed she should have expected. Dry, too. Its skin was scratchy, but not unpleasantly so. It felt like something left out in the sun. Like a rough rock not yet worn smooth by the water, resting on the riverbed and baking all day long. Sansa looked at Daenerys, and she saw that Daenerys was smiling at her. Sansa smiled back. Already it was less reluctant than it had been before.

It was a good play. Sansa had to admit that later, after they had all gone back inside the walls. Arya had not stopped gushing about the dragons and mocking The Hound to his face for being too afraid to get close to them. People kept climbing up to the battlements just to look at the beasts from behind the imagined safety of Winterfell’s walls. The wildlings especially seemed fascinated. Tormund kept lifting children up to his shoulders and threatening to toss them over the walls and feed them to the dragons while the children screamed and laughed. Sansa had been caught up in it too, until they had gone back to the courtyard and found Bran waiting, looking knowingly at all of them. Then she had remembered herself.

Yes, it had been a good play, and Sansa should have known better than to fall for it.

How quickly she had forgotten pretty, kind Margaery Tyrell and her promises and her assurances and her sweetness. Sansa still didn’t know exactly what it was that Margaery Tyrell had wanted from her, but she was supposed to be smarter at recognizing it now. It was obvious, wasn’t it? That Daenerys had been trying to win them over? She had been trying to win Sansa over, and it had nearly worked.

Daenerys and Robb and Arya all walked ahead. Jon pushed Bran’s chair in towards the hall. Sansa suddenly felt silly for not preparing a better feast. What would Daenerys think of them? Would it show too much of their struggles with food if there was not as much of a spread as she was used to?

“Are you all right?” Jon asked her. She met his eyes over Bran’s head, and she nodded. She looked back over her shoulder. The gate was still open, and the dragons still lay in the field, resting. What would they eat? What would they do? What if they got hungry? Or bored? “They won’t hurt us,” Jon said. It was obviously a platitude, but she smiled and pretended that it made her feel better.

She wanted to retreat to her room like a child. She wanted to bar the door and hide under the covers and wait for everyone to leave. It was an old, buried impulse that she knew she couldn’t listen to. She was Sansa Stark, and she could not allow herself to look like a coward in her own home, even if she felt like weeping. She watched Robb’s head as he walked. She watched the way his curls bobbed as he turned to look at Arya and then Daenerys, watching their conversation. Daenerys was gracious and stiff, just like Sansa. She was hiding too. Was she hiding because she was nervous? Or was she hiding because she was false?

Jon was watching her. She had to pretend to be fine. Bran would know. Bran would know the intentions of the dragon queen. She breathed easier when she remembered it. Bran had been able to tell them Littlefinger’s aims and Littlefinger’s plots. Surely Daenerys would be as easy for him to read.

You aren’t trapped, she remembered. You aren’t trapped. Not yet.

She breathed easier. She closed her heart to the foolish, terrified little girl who still railed against this. She had to go to the hall. She couldn’t afford to look unhappy or weak or scared. She could only smile like a good little bird.

Prove me wrong, Robb, she begged the back of his head as he entered the keep. Please, please prove me wrong.

Chapter Text

Perhaps it was for the best that Robb left without first telling her of his plan. Brienne would have been unable to stop herself from calling him a child and a fool if he had told her, and that wouldn’t have been very diplomatic.

She still couldn’t believe it. The physical distance that he and Daenerys believed they would be able to cover in a few days, firstly, but also that they had simply left. Robb left a note behind for Brienne and Davos, as if that would suffice. Its tone had been cheeky, too. Unconcerned. Uncaring about the potential political ramifications of such a reckless choice. Brienne had been so enraged that she had gone out to train early, sparring until she was too exhausted to be as angry as she wanted to be, but as soon as she had bathed and rested, she was back to being furious again. The idiot child. Of all the fool things.

Not that she would have liked to go with them, but she would have gone. What kind of sworn sword did she look like now? At best, Lady Sansa would be disappointed, and if anything happened to Robb, perhaps she would even blame Brienne, and it was all Robb’s fault.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said to Tyrion during the emergency meeting the queen’s hand called the afternoon Robb and Daenerys left. When it was clear that their notes hadn’t been some ill-advised prank and that they actually had taken off on Drogon’s back to go north for a visit, Tyrion thought it best to try and get a handle on things. That meant, in this case, pretending that everything was under control in public and berating everyone who hadn’t stopped them in private. “He left me here. I’m not happy about it either.”

She leveled Tyrion with what she hoped was a blankly stern look. She didn’t want him or any of them to see how nervous she truly was. Or how angry she was to be left behind. Brienne wasn’t made for this, for the diplomacy and politics of it all. She’d hated being one of the three most visible northern-aligned people in Dragonstone already, but Robb was a smart politician for all he was also apparently still an impulsive boy. She felt safe as long as he was always standing out in front of her, drawing attention with his passionate words and his empathetic speeches. Now it was she and Davos: a former smuggler and a sworn sword, both of whom once served Robert Baratheon’s brothers. It wasn’t ideal. The last thing she needed was for rumors to spread about her anger with her king. It would look like disloyalty. It would look like a lack of faith. In actuality, it was annoyance that Robb had chosen to do the stupidest possible thing, but she understood why it might look like something else from the outside.

Just…a note? What was the matter with him?

“We can’t let word spread that the queen has disappeared with her dragons,” Tyrion said, turning away from Brienne at last with a sympathetic half-smile, apparently choosing to believe that she had no part in this. “She’s already done that once, and they’ll think it’s the same. She’ll look inconstant at best. Impulsive, more likely. If anyone asks, she and Robb went to scout the land around Kings Landing to plan our attack. We are not worried that she isn’t back yet. This is exactly what she said she was going to do. Is that clear to everyone?”

Brienne watched the other advisors. Missandei was the only one who didn’t seem very worried; she had a faith in Daenerys that sometimes reminded Brienne of the faith she had once had in Renly, though she knew that Missandei’s heart belonged to Grey Worm. Grey Worm looked uncomfortable, but he was the first to nod in answer to Tyrion’s question. Varys was frowning, probably because this was one scheme he had no hand in, but he nodded as well. Davos glowered impressively, but he didn’t hesitate before following suit.

Tyrion gave another withering sigh. Brienne wanted to remind him that Robb's friends had more to fear than he did; those dragons were loyal to her. If Robb was mad enough or wicked enough to try and harm her, Drogon would make quick work of him. Not that he would. Robb was Robb. He was honorable and good, and when he made mistakes, they were for love, not cruelty.

That didn’t always make it better. And Tyrion would likely laugh in her face if she tried to say something of the sort to assure him. But the distinction was important to Brienne, who could not help comparing Robb’s follies with the things that Jaime had done. Love was a cruel thing. It made men do monstrous things.  What did it make women do? She wasn’t sure. For herself, love had only made her angry and hurt. Heartbroken. Perhaps it would have been different, if she had loved more wisely. Her choices had been abominable so far.

But no, that wasn’t right. They weren’t choices at all. She never would have chosen Renly. She certainly would not have chosen Jaime. It was so much easier not to love.

Tyrion dismissed she and Davos. Gently, but it was obvious that he wanted to discuss strategy with his people, and Brienne and Davos would be unwelcome in those conversations. On her way to the door, Tyrion called her back. Hesitant. Like he hadn’t thought to, and suddenly found himself speaking her name and asking for a moment of her time. She waved Davos on ahead, and Tyrion excused himself from the others briefly, following Brienne out of the room.

She had been so concerned with smoothing over the disappearance of the king and queen, and suddenly she remembered why she had been avoiding Tyrion’s presence until now.

“Tyrion,” she said, stiffly.

“Just a single conversation,” Tyrion asked. Gentle and polite, like she was some kind of injured fawn and he was the kind-hearted soul trying to save it without causing it further anxiety. “I know that he deserves your scorn and your silence.” Brienne almost laughed. Scorn and silence? Was that what he thought she was doing? Tyrion didn’t notice her amusement, and he continued, and the earnestness of his expression bothered her. He had only ever been wry with her before. She was uncomfortable with anything else. “But at least let him apologize. You care for my brother. Don’t bother to deny it.”

“I wouldn’t,” Brienne said. She may not have denied it even if he had said “love” instead of the much easier-to-admit “care for”. She couldn’t quite understand him. Was that really what he thought? Was that what Jaime thought?

“He knows he shouldn’t have goaded you.”

“He didn’t goad me. He tricked me. Because he wanted to die. I understand why he did it.”

Tyrion flinched at what he probably thought was coldness in her tone. She didn’t think it was coldness at all. It felt sparkling and warm, to her. A riot of emotions. Too much. She’d heard so many things about Tyrion’s cleverness, but he didn’t understand at all why she’d avoided Jaime’s rooms.

Jaime wouldn’t remember, of course. The way he wept when he woke in those days immediately after the battle. The way he still so clearly wished she had killed him. Angry? How could Tyrion believe her angry? She was terrified of him. Jaime returned to himself and realizing that he was still alive. Jaime who still might face the flames, if Daenerys willed it, and who would otherwise be used as a hostage or convinced to bend the knee and turn against the sister he loved. Brienne had saved his life, but it was a life he didn’t want any longer, and she was so afraid to see him again and see the loathing in his expression. How could Tyrion think she was angry? Jaime hadn’t chosen despair. He hadn’t chosen to want to die. She could only think of the way that Robb described his own blankness after the wedding. The emptiness and the coldness and the fact that nothing had pierced it for so long. It was a sickness inside Jaime as it had been a sickness inside Robb, and she could not be angry with him for that. He never would have done what he did if he was in his right mind, and she knew that, because she knew him. She had loved Jaime. She still loved Jaime. She understood him too well now to hate him for his choice—or to think it was a true choice at all.

“I can’t make his apologies for him,” Tyrion was continuing, heedless of her incredulous expression. “I won’t ask you to forgive him. I know he doesn’t expect that, either. I only ask that you speak with him. Just once, just so he knows for sure. If it’s to tell him that you wish to never speak to him again, well, I won’t be happy with you for it, but I’ll understand it, and I’ll help him through it. But he needs something from you. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important to his recovery.”

“The maester said he was recovering well,” Brienne argued softly, because she didn’t want to snap at Tyrion about how little he understood. She knew she would go already. Fear had kept her away long enough, and if Jaime truly wished to speak with her, perhaps he wasn’t even very angry. And even if he was, perhaps she could withstand it. Hear it and fire back with her own. She would not apologize for saving his life, but she could try and help, if he let her. Try and help him want to live. She’d done it once. She had no doubt that it wouldn’t be as easy this time around, but she could hope.

Tyrion just sounded so resigned to the idea that Brienne could simply…stop speaking to Jaime. Stop caring for him. Stop thinking about him. I would never, she wanted to say, but now she could see how it might look from the outside. She had avoided him so far, ever since he had awoken. She knew from Robb and from Tyrion and even from Podrick that Jaime was asking for her, and yet she had stayed away. She had been too afraid that she would be right about what she would find, and even if she wasn’t…she was afraid to face any of it. Anything that he would offer her. She hadn’t wanted to hear his apologies. She hadn’t wanted anger, or hatred, or even explanations or soft smiles or whatever else he might give her. She wanted him to be better, and she was afraid that she would find him unchanged. Hollow. Desperate for forgiveness or perhaps desperate still to die. Fear. It all was fear. Perhaps she had taken on the aspect of a trapped animal. The fear of trapped animals could turn to anger, sometimes. Maybe that was what Tyrion saw. But he had a point. Had she really meant to avoid Jaime forever? Dodge his summons until she and Robb and Davos were away? That seemed impossible now.

She was never avoiding him out of anger. She was avoiding him out of…well. She felt so many things. She had shown so many things on the battlefield. She was afraid of what she would say or do when she saw him again, and she was afraid of what he might say or do as well. That was all it was.

Anger, fine. Anger had its place, too. But she found it difficult to be angry with Jaime for very long. It wasn’t anything to do with her love, either. It was difficult because she knew him, and she understood him. He had known that he could not win against her. He had known that his men could not win against the might of the dragon queen’s army. He’d failed Cersei. He’d failed his men. If he was taken alive, he would be burned or executed in some painful, humiliating way as a message to the dragon queen’s enemies. Brienne wasn’t sure that was true, but she knew it was what Jaime had expected. He had killed Aerys. He had killed the dragon queen’s father, and if Cersei had got her hands on Tyrion, of course she would have made Tyrion’s death as painful as possible, and Jaime had probably heard Cersei planning Tyrion’s death half a hundred times. Brienne knew why he wanted to die. She understood even if she couldn’t understand his love and support for his sister, and even if she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t snuck away yet now that he was better.

Love didn’t necessarily help when it came to staying angry. Her anger faded faster when she thought of how she loved him. But her love wasn’t the only thing. She was hurt. She still loved him. She still despaired for him. She was still afraid of him. She was afraid for him most of all. She didn’t know how to face a man who despaired so passionately.

“He is recovering well,” Tyrion allowed. “Physically. But the rest...”

“I’ll visit him,” she said, and Tyrion sagged with relief.

She knocked on Jaime’s door, and his reply was muffled and indistinct. She hesitated. Had it been a refusal?

No. He wanted to see her. Tyrion had been clear.

She opened the door, and she entered, and he met her eyes immediately.

She had not spoken to him since he was fully awake. She had known that, of course, but seeing him again made her remember that fact almost violently.

He had been weak and pliable but still so fierce with something whenever he woke in those first days. She’d had to hold him down sometimes, her palms on his shoulders pinning him to the bed, because otherwise he would struggle and try to sit, try to stand. Escape, she thought, naturally, but he wasn’t trying to escape now. More often when he opened his eyes he was simply intense, speaking with a voice that cracked and grew hoarse with emotion as he pleaded for her forgiveness. He was never awake for very long, but each time she felt exhausted by it, like they had relived their fight all over again.

 She had watched him sleep, had stood and sat beside his bed when she was afraid that he would die, had accepted his tearful apologies when he woke still steeped in the milk of the poppy and whatever else they were giving him for the pain. He was weak and helpless and sorry, and she had been able to handle that. She was used to that; it brought her back to their time with the Mummers, when she was not embarrassed to care for him, because he was so insensate and not like himself at all. Or perhaps too like himself, like a soft core at his center, some creature that lived inside everyone and yearned for softness despite the hard walls everyone learned to build around themselves as they aged.

But then he was awake, and she had not returned. She wondered if Tyrion had told him about her guilt and her tears and her constant presence in his room in those first days. He certainly didn’t look at her now like someone who knew how she had grieved for him. He had gone very pale, and he was standing by the desk as if a statue, frozen in time.

She took in the sight of him. He had been marvelous to look upon in his Lannister armor on the battlefield. The sun had made his hair golden again, though lately it had been darker and threaded with gray. He had seemed larger, more imposing, more everything. Too much. But here...

Here, he seemed small. Wasted away. He was wearing soft clothing. An invalid’s clothing. It was all too big for him, hanging off him. His shirt hung open at the collar. His hand was occupied in fixing the laces of his pants, and he had frozen in place like that.

“Brienne,” he finally said. His hair was longer than it had been when she saw him in Riverrun. His beard was trimmed neatly, but aside from that, he looked so much like the man who had walked towards her in the Harrenhal baths that she had also frozen, still in the doorway. Jaime looked her over, and she wondered what she looked like to him. She had worn her full suit of armor to see him. She was carrying her sword. Gifts that he had given her but which had so recently been turned against him. Now they probably seemed turned against him once more. A barrier she had erected between them. Jaime’s fingers played restlessly over the laces as he waited for her to speak. She didn’t. She stepped fully into the room instead. She closed the door, though she hesitated before doing it. It wasn’t proper, surely, but what would it say about her expectations if she left it open? No. It was Jaime. Anyone would know that nothing improper would happen between them.

Kingslayer’s whore, she remembered, wearily. But it was too late.

“I didn’t realize you were walking,” she said. An awkward beat. “That’s good.”

He huffed out a laugh that also sounded like a sigh of relief.

“Yes,” he said. “Tyrion has taken to bullying me out of bed for a few turns around the room a day.”

“What does the maester say?”

“I’m on the mend. He says it shouldn’t trouble me.”

“Does it…cause you pain?”

Jaime smiled at that, for some odd reason. The same sarcastic smile he always had, but there was a softness in his eyes, like there had been when they said their goodbyes in Kings Landing.

“Only a little, my lady,” he said. “I fought off the infection easily enough. Much easier than last time.”

He held up his stump, as if she needed the reminder, though when her eyes flickered to it, he put it down again, as if to hide it. His own eyes had darted away. There was a slight tinge to his cheeks. He was embarrassed. He finished with the laces on his pants, turning away. He had been embarrassed often on the road to Harrenhal, when he was at his sickest and weakest. He had been desperate for comfort and a kind touch, but he had been humiliated by his reaction every time she had given it to him. Whether it was keeping him close by at night so they wouldn’t freeze or cleaning his beard after he was sick. He would lean into the touch, his face enflamed. She’d expected him to hate her for it, she remembered. Men didn’t like when women saw them at their weakest. But it had only drawn Jaime closer, and they were friends by the time they reached Kings Landing. Friends of a sort, at least.

It struck her, quite suddenly, how foolish she had been to expect the same kind of hate now. Of course he would not hate her. It seemed so obvious, watching the uncomfortable way he squirmed under her gaze. Shamed and terrified. Her gut hurt, low and rumbling, the same way she felt when she realized her sword had pierced him. Conscious now of doing him some hurt she hadn’t meant to. An accidental wound that was no less dangerous than an intentional one would have been.

“I’m glad,” she said simply, and Jaime hesitated.

“I can’t say the same for myself, I’m afraid,” he said. He was looking at her like he knew this was a mistake. An injury he should not prod. But of course he did.

“So Tyrion tells me,” she replied.

It was not what he wanted to hear. The tentative amusement in his expression blinked away, and he turned his head further, to look out the window. It was obvious, to Brienne’s eyes, that he was trying to compose himself. She was more concerned than ever.

“Of course,” he said blankly. “He worries too much.”

“Too much? Or enough?”

Jaime gave an apathetic half shrug before glancing back towards her. The smile he had affixed to his face was a cruelly mocking one.

“Did you come here to see your handiwork, then?” he asked. He lifted the bottom corner of his shirt so that she could see the wound beneath. It was hideous, still. Stitched together and healing nicely by all standards, but she felt a rush of air leave her lungs to look at it. Her eyes flew to his, and he dropped the shirt. The smile was gone as quickly as he had tried to maintain it. “Brienne,” he said.

“Enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For mocking me? For shoving this in my face? For trying to trick me into killing you?”

“All of it. I’m sorry. I’m in a beastly mood, and I shouldn’t take it out on you. I shouldn’t have…any of it. It’s all been wrong. It isn’t your fault you’re too good.”

“What does that mean?”

“Coming here, enduring this because Tyrion asked you to. I loathe you both for it, just a bit. I don’t want you here out of pity or misguided loyalty.”

“Misguided loyalty? Is that what you think this is?”

“You have to admit I know a thing or two about it.”

“It’s all you know,” Brienne fired back. She couldn’t figure him out. He was restless again. He paced in front of the desk. He was limping, favoring his side. She hoped that was not permanent. She would not like to have been the cause of that. “But I’m not the same.”

“No,” Jaime agreed, vehement. “You’re nothing like me.”

They stared at each other, then. She was trying to read him. She couldn’t. He was a mystery entirely. He wanted something from her. He was waiting for it. She could see the way his eyes were big from want of it. She didn’t know what it was.

“I wasn’t staying away because I was angry,” she said.

“You should be.”

“I’m not.”

“Why? I tried to trick you, as you said. I wanted to die. I knew it would hurt you, and I did it anyway, because I’m a selfish bastard. Hate me for all of those reasons.”

“I don’t.”

He seemed to swell in his anger, but it deflated quickly then, and he shoved his hand through his hair and turned away, shaking. Anger. Dread. She couldn’t tell.

“You should,” he said again. “You’re a fool for seeing anything else in me. You always have been, except at the start. You should have stayed exactly as you were. Hating me. Calling me Kingslayer.”

“Should I have let you die when the Mummers took your hand, then?”

“Yes,” he hissed, like it was obvious. She expected to feel angry or at least annoyed with him, but she found that she wasn’t. There was a calm settling over her.

“I didn’t let you die when I half hated you still. I could never let you die now, after everything.”

“Even after this?” he pointed out. His arms were folded now across his chest.

“I saw,” she started. She wasn’t sure she knew how to say it. How to describe the look in his eyes. She couldn’t do it without being twice as flowery and at least four times as poetic as she usually liked to be, and so she swallowed back the impulse. “I know you. I know why you wanted it. I know you weren’t you at all. You would never have chosen me otherwise. Not when you knew it would…” She trailed off, watching him. I cannot say it, she realized. She sighed. Jaime had limped a bit closer.

“What?” he asked. “What would it have done?”

Destroyed me, Brienne thought.

“Hurt me to do you harm,” she said instead.

“I am sorry,” he said. His voice was weaker than it had been. He couldn’t seem to look away from her anymore. He had the same desperate look in his eyes that he had during the fighting, and she felt paralyzed by it. She hated to see it again. “I am. I didn’t know what else to do. It was selfish. I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself. I wanted it to end. The battle. Everything.”

“You wanted me to kill you,” Brienne said. He nodded.

“Yes,” he answered, though it hadn’t been a question. He seemed to latch on to her incredulity. “I couldn’t go back. I didn’t want Cersei to win. I didn’t want the dragon queen to win. I didn’t want to be a prisoner, and I didn’t want to be a hostage to be bargained for or killed. I didn’t want to be burned alive. I wanted to die with a sword in my hand, and I wanted the most honorable woman I’ve ever met to do the honors.”

“The honors,” Brienne spat. “Even knowing…”

She shook her head again, and she could feel Jaime approaching.

“I know,” he said. “See? Selfish bastard. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

She met his eyes and found that he looked nervous. Displaced somehow.

“I don’t need your apologies,” she managed to say. “I’ve had enough of them.”

“What do you need? I’ll give it to you. Whatever I can give.”

“I want you to...” Live? Shut up? Kiss me? “Stop trying to die,” she said. He laughed. A strangled sound.

“Fine,” he said.

“And if you can’t…don’t involve me again,” she said. Her voice was more strained than she would have liked. Jaime’s smile faded again to hear it.

“I won’t,” he said. “Truly, Brienne. It was selfish. I wasn’t thinking of how you might feel to do it. I wanted to die, and I wanted your sword. That was all it was.” He looked a little more at ease, though she could still sense that restlessness she had noticed when she first entered the room. “I’m sorry,” he said again. She shook her head, and he laughed quietly at her expression. “I thought you must…” This time, he was the one who stopped himself from speaking.

“What?” she prodded.

“I stayed with her,” Jaime said. “After the sept.” He laughed again. It was twisted, this time. Pulled from him. “It seems mad now. I don’t know what I was…” he hung his head, and Brienne wanted badly to go to him. Touch his shoulder, his hair. An impulse never unlearned after those weeks on the road when he was feverish and prone to weeping from his loss and his illness. He had responded to her touches, and she had wanted to give them, and now it was a struggle not to return to that. Help him as she had helped him before. She wasn’t sure what he would welcome. She’d give him all of it. She clutched her pommel harder. “They call her the mad queen, but I was the mad one. I drifted. I allowed myself to drift. I stayed.” He shook his head, and he looked at her. His smile was more a sad smirk. One corner lifted up. “Surely, I thought, the most honorable woman I know has written me off as worse than useless.”

“Jaime,” Brienne sighed.

“She already drew her sword against me once. Now that I’ve proven myself to be a hypocrite as well as a sister-fucking monster…”

“Did you really think…?” She wasn’t sure how to continue. “I still…” He was watching her. It was so much harder when he was looking at her. She wished she had his talent for sarcasm. Or saying exactly what she meant, but with a tone so dry it seemed false and lighter than it really was. “I don’t think any less of you,” she finally said. “I know your choices are...they are your own. I have...”

“Please don’t be kind about this,” Jaime said. He grimaced and pressed his stump to his side, and Brienne startled forward immediately, surprising him. She took his arm and pulled him back towards the bed. He was amused by her efforts, she thought, until she prodded him gently to sit, and she saw the way he was looking up at her. Confused, perhaps, his brow furrowed. She had been careful with him. Perhaps that was what surprised him. People didn’t often think she was capable of tenderness. But he should know. She had cared for him on the road with the same energy.

“I wasn’t being kind,” she said to him, harsh to wrest that oddness and that expression away from him. “I meant it. You are…” a thousand words, each worse than the last, rang through her mind. “My friend,” she settled on at last. She was hardly sure that was true. “And I have seen you at your worst and best, and I don’t care for you any less for it.” His eyes glimmered, and he looked away to hide it.

“You never wrote to me,” he said. He was tired, suddenly, and he was weak as a kitten as she pulled the bedcovers up. His head rested back against the pillow. She saw a mug of some nearly-gone liquid beside his bed, and she felt relief. This conversation had seemed odd from the start, and of course it was some medicine from the healers. Slowly kicking in without her notice, and now it was laying him flat. His honesty and his vulnerability made sense with that drink inside him.

“Why would I write to you?” she asked. His maimed arm sought out her hand on the bedsheets, and he covered her fingers with it. He was looking at her searchingly.

“I wrote to you,” he said.

“You did not.”

“I did. I wrote to Sansa to ask if you were well. I thought you would write back.”

“You should have written me if you wanted to write to me. I told Sansa to answer your letter.”

“She did. And a hundred letters since. She saw it plainer than I did, I think. She’s quite smart, your lady of Winterfell. I can’t wait to meet her again. She saw it.”

“Saw what, Jaime?” Brienne asked with an indulgent smile. He smiled back. His eyelashes fluttered. He was close to asleep.

“That I love you,” he said. “She saw before I did. You never saw. Neither did I, until it was too late.” Brienne had frozen. Jaime’s smile faded again. “Brienne,” he said. Brienne pulled her hand away from his. She straightened up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“You need rest, Jaime,” she said. He was watching her still. “You need rest.” Again, like it was the only thing she knew how to say. Her cheeks were flaming. He’s not himself, she remembered. He’s drugged, and Tyrion said he was behaving oddly. That’s what this is.

“Brienne,” he said again, but she was shaking her head. He didn’t try to stop her again, and so she left.

He would not remember that conversation in the morning. She was sure of it. He would not remember, and she would not mention it. She would not wonder what madness possessed him that made him speak it. It was what he thought she wanted to hear. He was desperate to make things right with her, and this was the way he had chosen to do it, his drugged brain supplying absurd solutions to the problems not so easily fixed. Yes, that was it. That was what had happened. That was all it was.

Chapter Text

It was much easier to convince the dragon queen. She was more aware of the magic of things that could not be explained than the others were.

Jon and Sansa and Arya and Robb all had some awareness. Jon most of all, but even Jon had trouble understanding what Bran was saying. He still saw Bran as his brother. He still saw him as a child, too. Bran was no longer either of those things, though he understood why it was confusing to the people who had known him before.

Daenerys approached him with no such expectations, and she had a willingness to learn that felt new and unexplored in her. She had suffered a blow to her confidence in Meereen. He had seen it. She had begun to worry about her impulses and about her wants. She wanted to know that she was following the correct path. He wasn’t the first person she had approached with the aim of understanding more about herself. She sought easy answers. She sought tidy explanations. This time, at least, they would be given to her. Bran couldn’t tell her what was inside her heart, but he didn’t need to. She could understand that herself once she had chosen to do what was right.

He had seen her vision from the House of the Undying. He had seen everything, but the vision was easiest. It had been something for her eyes alone, and yet he had seen it. Retelling it to her was the simplest way of showing her the extent of his powers. It was always better to be sure that people knew. He had gone too far with Sansa. He had upset her with the mention of her wedding to Ramsay Bolton. But Daenerys was different. Her wedding night had been terrible, but she had loved her husband eventually, and she had good memories of him now. Bran would not make the same mistakes he had with Sansa. He was gentle and respectful when he spoke about her fear on the night of her wedding. He talked about her grief when she lost her husband and child. He talked, too, about her slow rise afterward, and how she took her fear and grief and strength and made them into power. He knew that that was something she was proud of.

Daenerys watched him while he spoke. She leaned forward in her chair. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frightened, either. Sansa looked small as she stood near the back of the room, her hands restless on her cloak as she fretted, but Daenerys didn’t get angry or accuse him of prying. She didn’t interrupt him or doubt him. She wasn’t smiling, but she was listening.

When Bran finished, Robb was nervous. He looked at Sansa for assurances that Sansa couldn’t give. Bran's indelicacy with Sansa before had made a lasting impression, and she was frightened that Daenerys would take it the same way. But Daenerys didn’t; Daenerys had not expected a reunion with a loving younger brother only to have the shock of a brutal night recalled instead. Daenerys didn’t seem to have had any expectations at all, and she met his words with an acceptance and lack of judgement that was a good sign. It was a good sign, too, that she so trusted Robb. She believed he was a good king, and she believed he was a good man, and she didn’t think that he would ever try to trick her with something like this. Bran had showed enough of his knowledge of the parts of her past that Robb would not have been able to tell him. That no one would have been able to tell him.

She believed in Bran's powers. That was an important first step, but it wasn’t the only one.

She leaned back in her chair and looked thoughtfully in Robb’s direction before turning back to look at Bran. She believed him, but still she hesitated. She had lived most of her life with a single-minded purpose: return to Westeros and take the throne. It was something she had wanted for so long. Something she had been sure was her birthright. It wasn’t, not really, but only Bran and Jon and Sam and Gilly knew that for now, and Jon did not want it to be shared. Even now, he stood near the back of the room and glowered at the floor, terrified that he would have to press his claim if Daenerys refused to help.

Bran and the three eyed raven both understood how difficult it was to change course, and how difficult it was for Daenerys to postpone when she thought that victory was so close at hand. It wasn’t. It wouldn’t even be a victory for long if the army of the dead remained. But a victory against living men was so much easier to imagine.

This next choice that Daenerys had to make was an important one. It would inform everything that came after. It all depended on her. What kind of queen did she want to be? Why did she want to be queen? What was it that drove her? He watched her as she considered. It would have been easier for her to ignore his warnings and ignore his words. It would have been easier for her to continue going after what she wanted. Maybe in a different lifetime, she would have. But she was more thoughtful than she had been when she was in Meereen, and she had learned the value of taking things like this a little slower.

“And you,” she said. She turned to Jon. Bran smiled slightly, an expression that only Sansa caught. She trusted him too, more than the others did. He hadn’t meant to upset her, but it had helped. She knew exactly what he was. She smiled back at him, relieved that he seemed content. Daenerys was watching Jon curiously. “My nephew. You say you’ve seen this night king?”

“I have.” Jon’s voice was grim and gravel-laced. His words were plain and unadorned with anything but the truth. He spoke of the wildlings and of Hardhome. He spoke of the Others, and of waking in the night and fighting one in the Lord Commander’s chambers. He spoke of everything he had seen. Jon wasn’t a natural speaker, but he was honest, and he was good-hearted, and Daenerys would see that.

When she looked to Bran to speak of his own experiences, he spoke of the three eyed raven. He spoke of the night king. He spoke of the centuries they had spent at odds, and the three-eyed raven’s attempt to keep the endless winter at bay for as long it could. Daenerys listened.

She listened when Sansa talked about their stores and how little they could afford a long winter, especially if they were going to be fighting a war on their own. She listened to Arya when Arya ran through all the minor northern houses that had sworn to send people to help the Starks defend the realm, and how many fighting men each house could promise. Robb hardly spoke, but Daenerys looked to him often, to see what his mood was, or to see if he agreed.

She absorbed all of the information with a smooth mask of an expression. It was the same expression Sansa wore when she was speaking to the northern lords. It was similar to Jon’s when he spoke to Sansa. Bran watched Daenerys, and he knew of a hundred other times she had been forced to make choices for the good of the realm, whether she realized it or no. The boy who had been Bran Stark admired her for her strength. He thought her beautiful and stern and frightening, but she made him sad instead of afraid. The three eyed raven thought she seemed impossibly young, and impossibly burdened.

She looked again at Jon, and her eyes took in his, and his hair, and the broad set of his shoulders. He looked nothing like the Targaryen nephew she had imagined since Robb revealed his existence to her. He looked like a Stark, but he was her family all the same. That made the Starks her family, too. She’d never had a family before, and Bran knew that family would be her weakness now. She smiled at Jon. It was a tired smile, and Bran knew exactly what it meant. She would help. She would choose correctly.

“You don’t have the Targaryen look,” she said. “I imagine that made it easier for Ned Stark to hide you.”

“It’s the Stark look,” Arya said with some pride. “Jon and I are the only ones who had it. The rest of them are all Tully.”

Sansa and Robb both smiled a little. Bran smiled too, because he could remember. Arya had always been proud of that.

“I’m a Snow,” Jon said. He was smiling at Arya too, but he was uncomfortable with the scrutiny, and he was uncomfortable that he had been called upon to speak yet again. He had hoped to fade into the background. “But I’ve always been a Stark. I’ll always be a Stark. They raised me.” He looked at Daenerys with a nervousness that also looked like apology. Bran saw that Sansa was tuned to it. She stood up straighter, like she meant to defend him if she needed to. Robb’s brow creased, too. They were all aware of Jon's nervousness, though they didn’t know anything of the book and what Bran had seen in his vision of a wedding by the water. Sansa saw danger and Robb saw discord. Only Arya remained still, but Bran knew that was because she had been ready to pounce from the moment this conversation started. “I knew a Targaryen,” Jon continued. “Maester Aemon, at the wall. He was a good man. I liked him a lot. I wish I had known, then. He said that a Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing.” Bran knew Jon didn’t really believe that. Bran understood that Jon was reaching out for the connection because he knew that it was important, and because he knew that it was what she wanted to hear. Daenerys would be more inclined to help them if she thought there was something to be shared.

It wasn’t necessary. But it wouldn’t hurt. Bran allowed it to continue.

“I thought I was the last, after my brother died,” Daenerys said. Her eyes glimmered. She looked at Jon with real hope. “I thought I was the only one. I made my dragons my children and my people into my family. My fathers and mothers and grandparents. My nieces and nephews. They were all I had. I was their mother and daughter and sister.”

“Then we’re both fighting for our families,” Jon said smoothly. He smiled at her. Small and contained, but true. Jon did not need another family, but he was glad to find that Daenerys wanted him for hers.

Glad because it was something he never felt he had, yes. But glad because it would serve their goal, too. Jon, more than any of the others, understood exactly what was at stake.

After, Sansa lingered when the rest of them left the room. She sat before him, in the chair Daenerys had claimed before. Daenerys and Jon were retreating to speak more about what Jon had seen at Hardhome. Robb and Arya were eager for the chance of a private conversation. Sansa was blank. Uneager for anything but rest. Bran saw her nervousness in the way she grasped at her skirts and the way she hid herself away from everyone else. She was terrified. He was sorry for that.

“You should speak to Robb,” he said.

“I will,” she replied. Her voice was very tense. She was angry, too. More fear than anger, but anger all the same. Bran understood her fears, because they were so easy to connect to her past. He had seen Robb choosing to disinherit her. He had seen Robb choosing to leave her in Kings Landing and keep Jaime Lannister as a prisoner. He had seen Robb choosing to marry the woman he loved and losing the war for it. He had seen all the times Sansa swallowed back her anger or her resentment because she wanted to be glad in an uncomplicated way that Robb was back. But she couldn’t be. She wasn’t. She was too betrayed for that.

“You want to ask me if it worked,” he knew. Sansa nodded.

“Will she help us?” she asked.

“She will.”

“Will she turn against us?”

Bran tilted his head, to look at her more closely. Her face was very pale, and it did not move. Even though she knew it was fruitless to hide things from both he and Arya, she did it anyway. It had become habit to protect herself, and Bran knew that it would be a while yet before she could stop doing it. She and Daenerys were alike in their ability to pretend, though they shared little else. They had learned to hide their true feelings behind false faces, but Sansa was cold and steady while Daenerys was warm and varied. They had learned to value different things as they grew and were melded into the women they had become. Still, they shared some things, and there would be some sympathies between them, as long as everything went well.

“I can’t answer that,” he admitted. “You don’t trust her.”

“I don’t trust anybody.”

“You trust Jon.”

Sansa breathed in sharply, and this time he saw the fear on her face for what it was. She thought that he meant to judge her, or taunt her, or use her emotions against her. Of course she did; all she had known since she left Winterfell was people doing just that. Cersei Lannister and Littlefinger and even the Tyrells, who were always kind to her with their reasons hidden behind syrupy politeness. Sansa kept herself locked away for a reason, and she was terrified of being exposed.

“You trust me,” he continued.

“You’re my brother,” she said.

“You don’t trust Robb.”

Her expression wavered at last. It crumpled slightly, like a piece of parchment. She looked down at her hands.

“I want to,” she answered, in a voice that was nearly a whisper. “But he’s made mistakes before. And this is our home. This is our family. I have to be sure.”

“You need to speak with him.”

“I know I do.”

“You will feel better when you do.”

She looked at him, and he knew she was trying to see if he was speaking as Bran or as the three eyed raven. They would never stop looking for their brother in him. He knew that, too.

“Is he making another mistake?” she asked. Her voice was very small. Young. Even Bran thought she sounded young.

“I can’t tell you that,” he answered. “But you should talk to him.”

Sansa nodded, and she stood up. She bent down to kiss him on the forehead, as she often did. Bran smiled up at her.

“We will be safe here,” he said. “I promise.”

She faltered, and he could tell that she wanted to say that he couldn’t promise that. But Sansa, like the others, didn’t completely understand the extent of his powers, and so she didn’t challenge him. He couldn’t promise it, of course. It didn’t work like that. But it would make her feel better. And Bran the boy wanted her to feel better, even if the three eyed raven part of him didn’t care.  

Chapter Text

He could hear their voices behind the door to the solar as he made his approach. Sometimes he forgot the way Sansa could make her angriest words seem like they were pleasant conversation, and so he was somehow surprised, when he entered the room, to see them standing up and squaring off across the desk. Sansa’s hands were spread, palms against the wood as she leaned in to make her point. Robb’s arms were folded across his chest, and he stood defensively, a few steps back from the desk. It was obvious just from their body language what they were talking about. 

“Give me a little credit, at least,” Sansa was saying as Jon opened the door. She glanced at him to ensure that it was him, and he saw the relief that flickered across her face before she turned back to Robb, lowering her voice even further. Jon felt a bit sick with the realization: they had avoided this moment and had avoided this conversation for as long as they could, apparently, and now he would have to stand against one of them. Would he sympathize with Robb or chastise him with Sansa? Was it even possible to do both? “I’m not a complete idiot. Of course I noticed.”

“Sansa, there’s nothing to notice,” Robb promised softly. He sat down in his chair with a weary sigh, apparently feeling safer with Jon in the room, but Sansa remained standing. Jon saw the way her fingers were just slightly curved, her fingernails digging into the wood, and he recognized that she was far more upset than she was letting on. Sansa was good at pretending, but he understood: she only had so much energy to devote to keeping her mask in place. At Castle Black, it had slipped often, her exhaustion making her open, and making it so much easier to see when she was fearful and hopeful and angry. She had built up her strength in the moons safe at Winterfell, but she still sometimes slipped, and she was slipping now. She had seemed off-balanced all day, worrying about Daenerys and then meeting Daenerys and then watching as Bran convinced Daenerys that she would be needed against the dead, and now it was all beginning to crumble.

“What’s wrong?” Jon asked, though he knew very well what the conversation was about. Robb sighed and indicated that Sansa should answer.

“Close the door,” she said. He did. “He’s…” Her anger faded slightly. She contained it, pushed it back down. She sighed. She sat in the chair in front of her. It was the same place she’d sat when Robb told them all that Jon wasn’t their brother. Robb was in his same seat too. Jon had a frivolous moment of hoping that this conversation didn’t do as much to sever his family ties as that one did. Sansa’s voice tempered itself, biting back on the initial anger. “I’m concerned about Daenerys,” she said. An opening volley. I’m concerned about Robb and Daenerys was in every gesture, every word. Robb knew it, too. His shoulders were hunched miserably as he leaned back in his chair, trying to look casual and not horribly guilty.

“She does have three dragons,” Jon pointed out. He sat in the chair beside Sansa’s. He wasn’t used to being the one trying to lighten the mood. He wasn’t sure he was entirely successful. “We should be concerned.”

Jon liked his aunt, at least so far. He respected her for her youth and for her rise to power. He felt a kinship with her that went beyond their literal kinship and was based more on the fact that they both had spent their childhoods largely alone, forging a family where they could because their family wasn’t available to them. Jon at least had had the benefit of an upbringing in a castle, with a family that mostly loved him and at worst tolerated his presence. Daenerys never had that, and he admired her for the strength that she cultivated to help her survive such a difficult childhood.

He liked her, but there were things that made him nervous about her, too. The way she spoke of their shared Targaryen blood. The way she spoke of the future, as if it was a guaranteed thing that he would choose to be named Targaryen and choose to help her restore the glory of their house—whatever that meant. He would not challenge her or question her or push back against her until after the fight against the dead, since he thought it deeply unlikely that he would even survive long enough to worry about the future, but he was cautious.

After meeting with Bran, Jon was slightly more cheered about her goodness; he felt sure that she would choose to fight with them for the living. Appealing to their family connection, he thought, had been the right choice, and he wanted to strengthen it. He spent the better part of an hour after leaving Bran in speaking with her, as they stood out in the field with her dragons. He hadn’t, even once, stopped feeling terrified of them. The dragons had eyed him with what seemed to be a mingling of curiosity and ambivalence that Daenerys claimed was adorable, and though they had not done anything overtly threatening, Jon could not see them as anything but.

He had smiled at the right places. Interjected with stories of his own in their conversation. He spoke of his death and rebirth, and of the Red Woman who saw his importance in the flames, because though most days he thought her a mummer’s farce, he knew that Daenerys would like to hear it. He was right; she had shared her own story of walking into her husband’s funeral pyre and emerging unburnt. It pleased her to think that they were alike in their ability to cheat death. She spoke of destiny in the same certain way that she spoke of birthright. Like a woman who had never had any doubts that she was meant to be important.

Jon could understand how someone might fall for a woman as intense and commanding as Daenerys. Even when she was telling pleasant stories, she spoke with a focus that made her every word seem impossibly important. Not quite in the same way Sansa’s whole focus on him made him feel like he was blooming under her attention, but close to it. Determination. Assurance. She wasn’t quite what he would have imagined a Targaryen to be, and yet she was, at the same time, exactly what he had expected.

He could understand Robb, if Robb had fallen. Jon was well versed by now in falling for a person you knew you shouldn’t fall for, and in the guilt and the shame that came with it. He also understood that the guilt and the shame weren’t always enough to make those feelings disappear. Hells, he even understood thinking that the person you loved was the only person who would ever matter, only to find a second love when you were very much not looking for it.

He understood. He understood every part of it. And yet…

Well. Understanding was one thing. He understood that Robb had loved Talisa. He understood that it must have been difficult for Robb to live through his losses. But there were things he would never understand. Robb’s choice to break the alliance and marry Talisa was chief among them.

No two situations were exactly the same, of course. No two lives. But it was impossible not to think of Robb’s choice and to think of his own. He had loved Ygritte. Not as well as he might have liked, but he did love her. And when the time came to choose…

Jon had chosen his duty. His honor. He had chosen to do what he believed to be the right thing, above all else. It wasn’t just his vows. It wasn’t just because it was what he had been charged to do. It was right, it was the thing he knew he had to do, even if it meant standing against the woman he loved.

Robb, though. Robb had chosen differently.

Jon knew that it was impossible to understand the consequences of a choice sometimes until after the choice had been made. And it was so much easier to look at something from the outside and make a judgement. Robb was his brother. Robb would always be his brother, and Jon would always love Robb, but he could not understand or respect the choices that Robb had made.

Jon knew that it wasn’t a choice, to feel things for someone you shouldn’t. Out of anyone, of course Jon understood that. He couldn’t blame Robb for whatever growing feelings there were for Daenerys. It also didn’t feel the same at all, and he knew that Robb would never make the same mistakes he had made before. Robb’s mistake had not been in loving. Robb’s mistake had been in choosing that love above his family, and he was not the sort of man who would be able to live with making that mistake a second time. Whatever madness had taken hold of him that made him marry Talisa, Jon saw none of it now in the careful, restrained way that Robb regarded the dragon queen.

It was also easy, though, to understand Sansa. Her fears and her anger and the desperate way she was looking between Jon and Robb now. Sansa had suffered more than anyone for Robb’s choices. They had all suffered in their way, but…Robb’s choices had been directly painful for her. They had been directly responsible for some of the worst things that had happened to her, and she couldn’t trust Robb the way she trusted Jon. That sick, jealous creature that lived somewhere inside Jon was even quietly glad for that, to know that he would not be supplanted in her affections so long as he continued to choose their family first, but it was muted and weak beneath the turmoil he felt at the thought of Sansa and Robb at odds.

The truth was that this confrontation had always been coming. From the moment Robb returned, it had simmered beneath their every interaction, and it was only timing that kept it from exploding before Robb again had to leave for Dragonstone. And then it was just worry that kept Sansa from being angry. Worry for Robb and worry for all of them. With Robb gone, there was Littlefinger to contend with, and winter to prepare for, and Winterfell to run. But Robb was back now to be angry at, and he was back with a beautiful woman on his arm, and it was only Sansa’s awareness of the importance of this alliance that had kept her from expressing her anger before they could take the time to have this conversation alone.

“Sansa thinks I’ve fallen in love with Daenerys,” Robb elaborated. “And that I’m going to give her my crown because of it.”

“It’s a valid concern,” Sansa snapped. “You did it before. You lost our home once for love. You chose a woman you barely knew over the safety of your sisters, and you chose to marry her against the alliance that mother made for you.” Robb flinched. Normally such a visible sign of his discomfort would temper Sansa, but it didn’t today. “And now you have left in the middle of negotiations and flown off on a dragon with Daenerys. A beautiful woman who you clearly have some fondness for. You brought no other guard. You stayed overnight at a holdfast where none of her people or your people were there to witness. Anything could have happened.”

“Do you really think that of me?” Robb asked.

“I have to,” Sansa answered. Her voice wasn’t as cold as it had been. It wavered, just slightly. Sansa was almost frighteningly competent when it came to dealing with their people, but Jon knew it was harder for her to be cold with Robb, even when she believed he deserved it. He recognized his own reluctance to be firm with Arya, when she was talking about wearing Littlefinger’s face and he was trying to still see her and treat her as the little sister she had been before they were parted. It was difficult sometimes when siblings were involved. There was an amount of unconditional love and unconditional acceptance in that kind of relationship, and there was a reluctance to risk losing it. And Sansa had become so practical. It had become second nature for her to dismiss the terrible things that had been done to her, because it was easier for her to convince herself that they had been necessary, or they had been strengthening, because otherwise they would just be terrible, and he knew she didn’t want to think of it like that.

And Robb had been thought dead to them for so long. Sansa had wanted him back, and now she wanted things to be good and easy and the same as they used to be between them. Jon knew it, because he wanted the same things. He wanted to trust his brother. He wanted to believe that Robb would make the right choices this time. But Jon didn’t trust in the same way he used to; trust had become something earned, rather than something given freely, even to his siblings. He had learned too many difficult lessons.

Maybe part of the problem was that they had never talked about her. Jon had always been too afraid to ask, and he assumed that the same was true for Sansa. Or maybe Sansa had simply been too angry to ask.

Robb’s wife. Robb’s murdered wife. The poor choice he had made. Talisa. She must have been something special to make Robb abandon his honor and his alliance. Maybe it was unfair to think that Robb would lose his head again just because Daenerys was beautiful and personable, but what else were they to think? They had no idea how or why Talisa had won Robb’s heart. They had no idea why Robb, of all people, made such a stunningly bad choice after proving himself on the battlefield. Jon was sure that Robb wouldn’t make the same mistakes again, but how sure was sure? Sure enough to risk their home? Sure enough to risk his family’s safety?

“I admire her,” Robb admitted. He met Sansa’s eyes. His expression held a combination of earnestness and hope and regret, and it was difficult to look at. So much sincerity often was, especially met as it was by Sansa’s rigid disappointment. “It didn’t start that way. I was defensive, and her people advised her poorly. But we found common ground. It’s easy to talk to her. We have the same pressures on us. We understand each other. We both came into power young, and we both have had our failures. She’s good to talk to, and I’m glad I know her. That isn’t love. And even if it was…I’m not the boy I was, and I won’t make the same choices. The safety of my family, your safety, it’s my top priority in all of this. I have thought of little else while at Dragonstone. You don’t have to fear.”

Sansa opened her mouth as if she wanted to argue, but she also looked stricken. Like something had frightened her in Robb’s speech. Jon had his own concerns; Robb’s description sounded an awful lot like love, especially in the tone he used.

“It would be a good alliance,” Jon blurted. Robb and Sansa both looked at him, eyebrows raised in a distinctly Tully look that made him even more uncomfortable. He hadn’t meant to speak, really, and now he found himself having to clear his throat and continue, as if he wasn’t embarrassed. As if he hadn’t spoken chiefly to make that haunted, terrified expression leave Sansa’s face “It wouldn’t be like the last time. If he did fall for her. If he did marry her. It would be a good alliance. It wouldn’t go against one.” He sent an apologetic look in Robb’s direction, but Robb shook his head and shrugged it off.

“He’s right,” he said. “Even if, Sansa. It wouldn’t be the same. ”

“She comes with an army and three dragons,” Jon continued. “She seems like to work with us to fight the dead, but I don’t know what that would mean if there were no plans for a further alliance. A nephew she doesn’t know can only go so far to securing her loyalty. A marriage alliance would give us options. It’s something that we should at least discuss. You’re the one who taught me that, you know.” Sansa’s eyes were sharp on his. “Look at every possible way until we make a choice, right? This time, we’d be doing that. Together. No one’s going to make a choice without the others, just like we promised Lady Mormont.”

Robb's lips were pressed in a thin line. Jon feared that perhaps he was angry to hear his wife dismissed as a problem he solved incorrectly, but he nodded in thanks when Jon’s eyes met his. He was shaken, Jon could tell. He looked like he had been dealt a blow, same as Sansa. There was still so much unsaid. Still so much tension between them. The immediate danger had passed, and Jon could feel pride for having been the one to avert the catastrophe, though mostly he just felt exhausted. In childhood, their problems and disagreements had such easy solutions. But this was the kind of thing that would never leave Robb and Sansa. It was a wound that would never heal correctly. A scar they would both bear for the rest of their lives. There would never be a way to remove Sansa’s fear beyond all doubt, just as there would never be a way to remove Robb’s guilt. There was only surviving it. Living with it.

Sansa frowned as she considered Jon’s words. Her hands were restless in her lap, her fingers twisting together and then apart again. She smoothed her skirt over her legs. Jon watched the war on her face. Anger and rationality. Hurt and consideration. She had an ability to see past her own wants to the things that were necessary, but there would always be a part of her that resented being asked to risk giving up her happiness or her safety, especially since it was so hard won. He wished he could fix it, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that could be fixed. Not yet, not in the world in which they lived.

Sansa stood, and she paced to the fire. Robb looked at Jon, and Jon shook his head. They needed to wait for Sansa’s reaction. Finally, she sighed, and she turned to face them.

“If we align with her,” she said. “Whether it’s a marriage or not, she’s going make you give up your crown.” Robb’s expression was somehow both apologetic and non-committal. Sansa’s expression was difficult to read. “Which would mean giving up our independence.”

Robb sighed, and he scrubbed a hand through his hair, making his tousled curls even more unruly. Sansa’s eyebrows drew together as she watched, revealing her anxiety. She was hoping that Robb would tell her some easy solution that she hadn’t yet thought of, but Jon knew he wouldn’t. He could read Robb’s thoughts so clearly.

The north was just too big. If they brought more of an army to aid her, or if Daenerys was more desperate, maybe they’d have a chance at retaining their independence. It would be a better position to bargain from, at least. But in truth they needed her more than she needed them. The power was all hers. She could demand the north and burn Winterfell to the ground with her dragons, but she didn’t even need to do that. The Night King would take care of them well enough if she refused to help. Perhaps she would fall to the army of the dead as well, but the north would fall first. Jon could see how it would be better to give up the crown peacefully and stand a chance at surviving. The northern people were stubborn, occasionally to a fault. But they would understand this. Dragons were a different breed of warfare, and the dead were already going to be next-to-impossible to beat. The northern lords wanted to retain their independence, but at the cost of their lives?

“The north declared independence because of an illegitimate king,” Jon said slowly. “Because Joffrey was a monster, and because he beheaded your father.” Sansa met his eyes, hearing the fury in his voice. The furrow was gone from between her brows. “If there’s a good queen on the throne. A legitimate queen. Even if Robb doesn’t marry her...maybe she’s a queen worth serving, and maybe we don’t have to risk another war to stand against her.”

The expression on Sansa’s face was briefly heartbroken. She was heartbroken. He wished that he had the right words to make it better, but he could only look at her helplessly and will her to understand.

“I need you to be sure, Robb,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. “I need you to be sure she will be a good queen before you bend the knee.”

“Of course, Sansa,” Robb said, scrambling to answer, scrambling to make that expression on her face go away. “I haven’t promised her anything except to help her take Cersei from the throne. And she will help us against the dead. Bran’s sure of it. That’s what matters now. Everything else…that has to wait for after. But Jon’s right. Daenerys isn’t Joffrey. She’ll be a just queen. I’m sure of that.”

Sansa nodded. She still didn’t seem thrilled. Robb stood, and he came around the desk to pull her into a hug, but Sansa resisted being pulled, evading his touch, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I will protect us,” Robb said. His voice was firm. “I will protect you.”

“You didn’t, before. I won’t be married again to some monster.”

“You won’t,” Robb promised. His expression was heartbroken too. “You won’t. I swear it. Whatever negotiation there is, it will include that. You won’t have to marry anyone you don’t choose.”

“And if I never choose?” Sansa asked. Cagey, hands clutching at her arms. Jon’s stomach hurt to see her so wounded.

“Then you won’t ever marry,” Robb promised, and Sansa breathed again, the breath shuddering out of her. She nodded, and Robb approached her again. Gentler than last time. This time, when he tugged on her arm, she let herself be pulled into a hug. It wasn’t forgiveness, Jon knew, but it was a start. She trusted Robb at least enough to follow through on that promise. “I know you can’t believe me, but I will prove it to you. My family comes first. You come first. I failed you before, but I won’t fail you again.”

He pulled away to look her in the eye, and she nodded. She still looked doubtful, and afraid, to Jon’s eyes, but she was holding it back. She smiled, but it shook. Jon wondered that Robb couldn’t see it. He wondered that he could. He never used to be so adept at reading people, but Sansa was so easy to see right now.

 Robb left, but Jon stayed. He waited for Sansa to speak, because he knew she would. She was still standing, and she gazed into the fire. He wondered if she even realized that he was still in the room with her. It was a strangely empty feeling, to still wonder about that.

But then she turned and looked at him. Her eyes were glassy, and he stood immediately. He went to her. He hugged her. Much the same as Robb had done. He had to remind himself of that. It would have been strange if he hadn’t hugged her.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I want to trust him,” she said.

“I know.”

“I want to believe him.”

“I know you do.”

They stood like that for a while, until finally she pulled away, and she looked at him with a sad smile.

“I thought we would be safe,” she said. “As long as we were allowed to govern ourselves. I thought that was what we were fighting for.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, but she shook her head. She sat down in her chair, and he remained standing beside her.

“No,” she said. “You were right. The north doesn’t have the resources to fight another queen, especially not her. It’s better to get on her good side now and be rewarded rather than risk her wrath later. Still. A Targaryen on the throne. It’s a big act of trust.”

“Trusting her? Or trusting Robb to know her?”

“Both,” Sansa admitted. “We know nothing about her. We know what she’s been through, but not what it has made of her. It’s so easy to be twisted by the terrible things that are done to us. She might not have been, but I almost was.” She looked at him, and he saw the hopelessness in her gaze.

“You weren’t,” he told her.

“No. I wasn’t. But that won’t do anything to protect me if she was.”

“I’m here,” he reminded her. “And I’m going to protect you. I told you.”

“And I told you that that wasn’t possible. Jon...”

“Sansa,” he responded, in the same testy tone, and she finally laughed at him. It was tired. Exhausted.

“She’s beautiful,” she said. He opened his mouth to—to what, Jon? Reassure her that she’s beautiful, too? Sansa continued with, “she’s beautiful, and she’s kind, and she did a clever thing in reaching out to all of us to make sure that we felt that we all felt seen by her. I want to believe her, Jon. I do. I don’t want to sound so horrible and jealous of her. But it would be a good strategy to be so kind. It would be a good way to disarm us. We don’t know her. I want to believe that Robb isn’t just falling for a pretty face and the lure of, I don’t know, dragons? But he lost sight of things before.”

“I know he did,” Jon sighed. “I know.”

“He refused to trade Jaime Lannister for me and Arya,” Sansa said. She was holding herself very straight in her seat now. Her hands were clasped together. He knew that that meant that she was saying something that she was afraid to say. He didn’t move. He hardly felt like he was breathing. “It would have been bad strategy,” she said. “He was right. It took me a long time to decide that, but he was right. I understand why he made the choice to keep Jaime instead of trading him back. Jaime was too valuable a prisoner. More valuable than me. I understand why my mother made the choice she made, too, but…I understand Robb for what he did.” She took in a sharp breath, and she looked down at her hands again. “But then he fell in love. And he broke a vow. And he lost the war.” She laughed bitterly, and finally she looked up at Jon. “That was bad strategy too,” she said. Her voice was small, and choked with tears. “But she was worth risking the war for, and I wasn’t.”

“Sansa,” Jon said, and he could not stop himself from going to one knee beside her chair so that he could pull her into another hug. She bent over him, and he was almost relieved when she began to shake and sob. She didn’t like to cry in front of him. He didn’t think she liked to cry in front of anyone. But this was what she needed. She had cried like this the first night she was with him at the wall. She’d woken in the night, gasping awake in the bed he had given her. He had fallen asleep in a chair by the fire, but he’d woken at the sound of her distress. She had been so relieved at the sight of him and so frightened from her dream that she had begun to sob, and he hadn’t known what to do. Holding her seemed like it would be a mistake, and he had almost gone for Brienne, but in the end, he had offered her the embrace, and she had taken it gratefully.

“I’m sorry,” she said now, finally, as her tears dried, but he only held her tighter and shook his head.

“Don’t be. It’s all right.”

“I thought I was past it, but I’m not. I can’t stop thinking about it. He makes all these promises, and he always knows exactly what to say, but…I used to think that he would protect me. He always made me feel safe when I was with him. But he left me to die in Kings Landing, and he lost the war for a woman he’d only barely met. I know it’s not…it’s not the same. I know this might be different. I know that it would be a good alliance if he did marry her, this time, but…”

“You don’t need to explain it, Sansa,” Jon said gently. “I understand.”

She nodded, and she rested her forehead down on his shoulder. The sigh she released then was weary, heartbroken, and it broke his heart, too.

“I thought it would be different,” she said. “I thought we would all just be here together. Forever. None of us ever growing old or leaving. I’m still a stupid little girl.”

“You aren’t,” he said.

“I am. Something like this was always going to happen.”

“I’m still here,” he reminded her. His heart was beating traitorously fast. Yes, he was still here. It was difficult to say what could compel him to leave Winterfell now. Not much. “I’ll keep you from harm, Sansa. I swear it.”

“Until you leave, too,” Sansa said. She pulled back to look at him. Her hands were still on his shoulders. She squeezed them gently, as if to apologize for her words. Had his incredulity shown so obviously on his face?

“Leave?” he asked. “Why would I leave?”

“Why does anyone?” Sansa asked. She pulled her hands away, but he took them in his own. He held them firmly.

“I’m not going to leave you,” he said. His eyes were on hers. Intense. Too much. He could tell. But she didn’t look away. Not immediately. She stared at him, her eyes open wide. She opened her mouth, then shook her head.

“You can’t promise that,” she said. “And you don’t need to. I was just being…”

“I have no desire to be anywhere but here,” he promised her. He wondered if her eyes were so wide because she saw too much, or if perhaps it was just that his words were so vehement. He could not tell. “This is my home. You are my family. We're stronger together. I know it can’t last forever. I know there must be changes. But I’d keep it just like this, if I could. I swear it. I would.” He wished she understood how dark and empty it all had been until she had come to him and dragged him back from the edge. “Northern independence, the battle of the bastards. Everything men have been praising me for moons now. It was all for you. For Winterfell. For the Starks. For you. I know I don’t often know how to say the words. Maybe I should get better at that. But I swear to you. I will protect you, and I won’t leave you.” He held her gaze, and she was gaping at him openly now. She looked at him like…like he was Symeon Star-Eyes, or Aemon the Dragonknight. Like he was the storied knight that she had been waiting for.

No, he remembered. That was Brienne. And Brienne already saved her. All you are is the cousin who wants too much.

But she was looking at him so openly, and the horrible little voice inside his head that always told him to shut up and leave her alone was silent. 

“Jon,” she said quietly. He smiled at her. She hugged him desperately, with all her strength.

He wrapped his arms around her, and he continued to want. But that was not more important than this. What that broken part of him wanted would never be more important than the simple fact of her happiness, and the simple fact that she was his family, no matter what else he was. Family had always been so important to him, and he would do anything to make sure she knew it.

Chapter Text

Tyrion had already been in a particularly terrible mood—a reasonable reaction, he thought, to the disappearance of his Targaryen queen with a Stark would-be king—but Jaime’s despondency was making it worse.

They had both received ravens from Sansa Stark only that morning. Tyrion had no idea what Jaime’s could have said, but his own had been illuminating. Daenerys and Robb had arrived safely at Winterfell. Daenerys was enjoying her stay in the north, and had been accepted happily by the entire Stark family. She had enclosed her own small note, in which she had promised that she and Robb would return in several days, after she had explored some more of the north with him.

I assume you’ve already come up with some clever explanation as to where we are.

Yes, so very clever. Tyrion Lannister, the cleverest imp in the realm, who fought his way into this thankless position of Hand twice and both times suffered under the whims of impulsive monarchs.

So it was bad enough without Jaime and his sullen silence and his mournful sighs and the particularly handsome way he gazed out the window in some sort of love-struck agony, making all the servant girls swoon over him and giggle about him in the hallways more than they already had.

“I fucking hate you,” Tyrion said.

That got his brother’s attention at least. Jaime turned to look at Tyrion, his brow furrowing attractively.

“You don’t,” he said. “Or you wouldn’t spend so much time lurking in my room, ensuring I’m not slipping into another “state”, as you keep calling it.”

“I do,” Tyrion griped. He took a healthy gulp of wine, and he ignored the way that Jaime’s mouth tightened at the corners when he did it. If Jaime could try to commit suicide by running afoul of that great beast of his, Tyrion could kill himself slowly in drinking. “Things are complicated enough. You’re an added burden.”

“You could have just let me die,” Jaime pointed out blithely.

“And see? This is why I fucking hate you,” Tyrion continued. “Because you can’t even let me hate you properly. You have to be too pathetic to hate! And all the servant girls won’t shut up about you. I forgot what it’s like living with you. It’s endless.”

“How do you think I feel? What man needs four sponge baths a day? They keep offering.”

“You aren’t getting less hate-able,” Tyrion grumbled. “It’s so much worse when you complain about it. Your gifts are wasted on you.”

“My gifts? I’m an old, crippled, sister-fucking…”

“Gods, is it time for my nap already? Wake me when you’ve reached the end of your list.”

“You’re not exactly an easy person to love right now yourself,” Jaime snorted. He went back to looking out the window. His hair was perfectly tousled, the bastard.

“Yes, well. It’s been a bit hectic.”

“Apparently. Sansa says the boy’s still alive, so your queen may not be her father after all. Remains to be seen how much she’s like her brother.”

“Except this would be a beneficial alliance, not a colossal fucking mistake,” Tyrion muttered. He poured himself another glass. Jaime sighed like an old septa. “Oh, don’t start.”

“I hate it when you get like this. You remind me of her.”

The goblet was halfway to his lips when Jaime said the words, and Tyrion cringed and lowered it.

“Fine,” he said. He pushed it idly to the side as if Jaime’s words hadn’t shaken him. Jaime had so rarely spoken of Cersei since waking at Highgarden. He had spoken of her haltingly at first, as if he had needed to. He had apologized for fighting for her for so long. It obviously bothered him, and it had obviously been important for him to try and make Cersei’s ghost between he and Tyrion at least a little faded. But he had avoided mentioning her since, and Tyrion had assumed…well.

It wasn’t actually much of an assumption. It was just knowing. Jaime’s relationship with their sister had always been tempestuous. Even growing up, even when they were inseparable, there had been times when Jaime was furious with her. He would swear he was finished with her, but he never had been. That wasn’t how Jaime loved. It was how Cersei loved: with conditions, with terms that needed to be met. For Jaime, love was much simpler. It was devotion. Near worship. It withstood everything. Jaime loved Cersei the way a dying man loved water. Always, fully, with more abandon than most men ever felt for anything. He was a singular man, Jaime. That wasn’t always a good thing. Tyrion had found a certain pride in being odd, but Jaime’s pride was different. He was proud of his loyalty to such a monstrous woman. He was proud of his knighthood, though he had done little enough with it over the years. He was proud of cuckolding the king, probably. But pride was nothing against what Cersei wanted. He would give her anything, no matter how weak it made him.

This separation seemed doomed to end as all the others had: with Jaime giving up, giving in, and crawling back to her. What else could Jaime do? Loving Cersei had been his entire life, and he was a man made for loving.

But through all these weeks of slow recovery at Highgarden, he hadn’t spoken of her since the beginning. He had not asked about her. He had not written to her. Tyrion had opened all of Jaime’s letters to Sansa Stark before sending them to Winterfell to make sure that they weren’t secret missives for their sister instead. He told himself that he was doing his duty as the Queen’s Hand, but he knew it was much more personal than that. He wanted to know when Jaime was going to disappear again.

He wanted to know when he would have to return to thinking of his big brother as an enemy.

And yet, Jaime was looking distastefully at the wine on the table. He’d said her in a tone that dripped with venom. His letters to Sansa were all scrawled, sarcastic nonsense that seemed to all appearances to be directed to the Stark girl. Neither of Tyrion’s siblings was clever enough to come up with a code so elaborate, and though Tyrion didn’t recognize any of Sansa in her return letters to Jaime, he knew that could simply be because he scarcely knew his little wife at all, and had no idea what she might sound like in a letter to a friend rather than a fellow diplomat.

Jaime healed more every day. He grew stronger. Walked for longer. Asked more questions about his men and the state of things with the war. And yet he stayed. He didn’t try to run. Tyrion had his room watched at all times by men he trusted, and they never reported anything out of the ordinary. No bribes to servants. No questing attempts to test the limits of his gilded cage. Jaime was a model prisoner by all accounts, with nothing suspicious at all in his actions or attitude, which was so unlike him that it was suspicious on its own.

Jaime was still looking out the window. If he was standing by it, he could at least have the excuse of watching the training yard, but lying abed he simply looked like a stubborn boy who didn’t want to make eye contact. Tyrion could see the way his one hand was curled into a fist.

“Was she drinking a lot, then?” he asked. His tone was too tentative, too obviously hopeful. He couldn’t help it. He seemed always fated to be a child around Jaime.

“Yes,” Jaime said shortly. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Ah, so it’s your other lady love you wish to speak of.”

“No,” Jaime sighed. Tyrion stifled a smile. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“The Lion of Lannister mooning after a woman most men regard as hideous. Oh, don’t glare at me. You look pathetic. I’m not saying anything untrue. Besides, I’ve come to find her quite…charming. And any man who has seen her fight would have to admit she’s impressive.”

“Are you trying to make me jealous?”

“No, but I admit my shittier impulses are all sort of deeply ingrained, so I may have been doing it by accident. Why? Is it working?”

“No,” Jaime insisted resolutely. “And it won’t. I know how she feels about me.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“This is torturous, you know. You could just tell me what you want me to know instead of hinting at it.”

“I don’t want you to know. You just keep sitting there, asking me about it. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Well now I want to know, and you know what a curious beast I am. Out with it.”

“Oh, she loves me,” Jaime said, managing to make it sound utterly dismissive, though his eyes were too anxious to make the dismissiveness believable. “She doesn’t believe that I love her, though.”

“She came to see you, then?”

“She did.”

“And for some fool reason you told her that you love her?”

“The fool reason was that medicine your healers keep putting in my drink. It makes me tired and truthful. It’s a terrible combination.”

“I wonder why she didn’t believe you.”

“Well, that was part of it. But I doubt she would have believed me anyway. I tried to bring it up the next day, and she nearly jumped out of her skin and pretended she had no idea what I was talking about. I dropped it, because the whole thing embarrassed both of us, and I was starting to long for death again.”

“Can you blame her?” Tyrion asked. “She’ll be vindicated when you change your mind and go running back to Cersei.”

Jaime shook his head. He looked at Tyrion sharply. His face was very drawn, his expression nearly hopeless.

“I’m not going back to Cersei,” he said. Tyrion kept his face blank, though it was a struggle.

“I didn’t think I’d ever hear you say that.” He still didn’t, frankly. It was easy enough to speak words, even if they hadn’t been spoken before. It was much harder to follow through on them. Jaime wasn’t much of a one for empty promises, but he was a man who promised more than he could deliver. He used to find ways to make it up to Tyrion as a child, but they weren’t children anymore, and Jaime was running out of chances.

“It took losing my hand to start it, but it took a sword in the side to end it. I can’t go back to Cersei. I’m not the same man I was when I was with her. I haven’t been for a while, but I pretended to be, because I didn’t know who else to be.”

He was serious. He was sincere. He didn’t look hollow anymore, the way he had when he first woke up. He looked more solid, like he had actually figured something out. Tyrion wanted the wine more than ever.

“You never did understand your own worth,” he managed, and Jaime gave him half a smile that hurt Tyrion’s heart to see.

“Maybe not,” Jaime said. “I hardly know who I am without her, but…it feels better. I don’t feel so trapped. I owed Brienne my thanks for that, at the very least, but instead I told her that I'm in love with her. I’m lucky she came back at all, even if she’s very correct now.” He smiled a little, fondly, thinking of her. “Gods, she’s so bad at pretending,” he said, as if even that was worthy of love.

“You don’t sound particularly surprised that she doesn’t believe you,” Tyrion said.

“No. I’m not. I wouldn’t have believed me either. You don’t, and you know me better than anyone.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t believe you.”

“I know,” Jaime said. Tyrion hated this. Jaime’s small voice and his narrowed eyes and his obvious pain. He was rubbing at his stump idly, in a way he only ever did when he was particularly distressed, and Tyrion wanted to snap at him to stop. Stop being upset. Stop being sad. I don’t know how to help you.

“I saw Brienne and The Blackfish and Robb Stark at Riverrun,” Jaime said suddenly. His voice was very faraway, like it got whenever he talked about serving under Aerys. “Brienne drew her sword on me, and I knew that she was prepared to use it. I let them go. I would have let them go regardless, I think, but I knew I couldn’t fight her, and I didn’t want to try. And then I went back to Kings Landing. All that way home, I was trying to tell myself that it was only Cersei, that I was eager to get back to Cersei, but it didn’t work anymore like it used to. I think I’ve felt this way for a long time. Not just love. Not just…not just Brienne. But this separation from Cersei. We aren’t the same people. We don’t…I don’t want the same things. I loved her. I would have given her anything. I did horrible things for love of her. And for what? Did she ever even love me the same? I can’t remember what it used to be like. I think I’ve spent so long justifying all of it that I can’t remember if it was ever even good, or if it was just good because it was the only thing I wanted.”

“Jaime,” Tyrion said softly. He had never seen his brother so calm and yet so earnestly shattered. It was worrying. Lannisters didn’t say sincere things like this. Lannisters said shitty, sarcastic things that contained hidden hurts, and then they moved on.

“I saw how cruel she was to you. I saw it, and I did what I could to alleviate it, and get you away from her, and protect you, but it wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be enough, because doing enough would have meant standing against her, and I never would have done that. Not even for you. I’m sorry.”

“Jaime, you don’t…”

“I should have left her after the sept,” Jaime insisted. His voice was growing in strength. Angry and confused and self-loathing. This was the Jaime who had chosen to die on that battlefield, and it made Tyrion’s stomach hurt just like last time. “All the way home, I felt unsettled. I knew something was wrong. And then Bronn told me. He said that my son was dead. Tommen and Uncle Kevan and the Tyrells and everybody. Everybody but Cersei. She crowned herself while the ashes still fell over the city. Wildfire, Tyrion. She used wildfire.”

Tyrion felt sick. He eyed his goblet. He didn’t drink, though it took almost everything not to do it.

“Yes,” he managed to say. He remembered the way the green lit up the night over the Blackwater. The screams that came from the water. The smell of blood and fire and burning flesh. “I know she did.”

“I don’t know how she kept her throne. I don’t know why no one stopped her. Why no one stopped her before, even. But they didn’t. Last time, I…” He swallowed thickly, and looked away. Tyrion remembered what Daenerys had said, some time before she left: the truth of Jaime’s kingslaying. A truth that he had never told anyone except, apparently, Brienne of Tarth. It was hard not to feel bitter about that, though it was a child’s bitterness. Why not me? Why didn’t you tell me?

“Last time, you did the right thing,” he said, and Jaime looked at him. Frowning. “You can’t blame the girl for telling Daenerys. She wanted to save your life.”

Realization stole over Jaime’s face, followed immediately by something vulnerable that made Tyrion think he should be the one to look away this time. But he didn’t. He watched his brother struggle through it.

“She'll never stop trying to save my life,” Jaime finally said. His jaw was clenched with something that looked an awful lot like fury. “It’s going to damn her eventually.”

“Loving you?” Tyrion asked, understanding what Jaime was truly saying. “From experience, it’s not nearly so dramatic.”

“Maybe not for you. None of us seem to know how to love properly. Father would be proud. Mother would have been horrified, I think. She loved us easily enough. I remember that. Brienne…she just won’t give up. It’s not in her nature. She would have rather died than kill me, I think, though it would have been a horrible trade. I should have gone with her to find the Stark girls years ago. I should have gone with her when I saw her at Riverrun. But I was weak.”

“I don’t know if it’s weakness,” Tyrion mused. He always thought Jaime’s fierce love was a strength: though it blinded him to the worst parts of the natures of his family, it made him invulnerable to Tyrion’s eyes. There was nothing Jaime would not do for the people he loved.

“I was weak,” Jaime reiterated. “I should have stopped her. I should have done anything. I should have killed the fucking High Sparrow myself and take the fall. Maybe Tommen would still be alive.”

“And you would be dead,” Tyrion said bitterly. “Just as you wished.”

“The world doesn’t need me,” Jaime said. Calm and earnest still. So wrong. So un-Lannister. It was faintly embarrassing to Tyrion, actually. “It doesn’t need more men like me. It needs more people like her. People who swear oaths to good families and then stick to them. People who fight for the innocent. That’s what the world needs.”

“The Starks are just another family,” Tyrion reasoned. “I know you have a fondness for Sansa, and for Brienne, but they aren’t particularly special. They’re just a great house that has been dealt a poor hand, so you feel sorry for them.”

Jaime laughed bitterly. He shook his head. 

“You do like to think neutrality is a clever stance sometimes,” he said. “Like removing all context and sense and proclaiming things exactly the same is an enlightened position and not just…lazy.”

“I could slap you,” Tyrion said, though in truth he was almost delighted to see that wry amusement on Jaime’s face, even if it was at his expense.

“Sometimes I give you too much credit for cleverness. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You hate the Starks. You think they’re pompous bores.”

“They are. But they’re also…they’re good. They were good. And we ruined them.”

“It wasn’t only us.”

“No, but father’s hand…my own hand started the war. Father’s shaped it.”

“The realm was ready to explode one way or another.”

“Is that how you justify it?”

“I don’t justify it at all. It was war. Terrible things happen in war. That’s why people put up with so much shit from each other. They’d rather not escalate.”

“Except father. Father escalated.”

“Father reacted, but yes, I suppose his reactions did have a tendency to escalate.”

“You killed him for some reason, I assume.”

“Yes. He was a bastard. Unfortunately not all of us have noble reasons for doing the things we do. I had my own grievances with him, but the health of the realm was not, I admit, foremost among them. I’m not a bloody Stark, since you seem to hold them in such high regard.”

“I didn’t say anything particularly shocking, you know.”

“I know. You said the same thing the rabble says, which is why it upset me. It’s not like you to take such a…pedestrian stance.”

“The rabble were right to call Aerys mad, and they were right to try and rise up against Joffrey. They understand some things. And they’re right about the Starks. They’re right about us. Look at them and then look back at our own folly. Fool mistakes and uptight honor, yes. That’s their legacy. What’s ours? Father always thought we were the special ones, but we’re just a bunch of golden monsters, grasping for what we feel we’re owed.”

“If father could hear you,” Tyrion started to laugh. Jaime wasn’t laughing.

“Let him,” he said. “Let him crawl out of his crypt and try to tell me that his legacy was worth all this. All those deaths. All those people. The sept and the armies of the kings father helped tear down. Elia Martell and her children. The Starks at that wedding. Was it worth it? You can’t seriously tell me you think it was.”

“It’s not about worth,” Tyrion said, but he could tell that Jaime didn’t like that.

“What is it about then? What’s it for? Father was always trying to get me to understand, but I never could. You did.”

“Everything you did, you did for this family,” Tyrion reminded him. “That was all father was asking.”

Jaime laughed. Another bitter sound. Tyrion wasn’t used to feeling like the fool beside Jaime. Jaime wasn’t a fool, but he played the part of one so often that it was hard to remember that sometimes.

“Father wanted me to be ambitious for the family,” Jaime reminded him. “I fought for Cersei. I fought for you. I killed to return to her. I killed to please her. To please father. I didn’t do any of it for ambition or for legacy. Not mine, anyway. My own children bore another man’s name. I could have died without passing on anything, and I wouldn’t have cared. It was for love. Not for any of the rest of it. I wanted to please all of you at once, and instead I failed you all.”

“You haven’t failed us.”

“I have. You…you’re the only one left I can fight for, and I don’t want to. You serve a woman I can’t trust. I failed Cersei by not stopping her. By indulging her. I failed father by not leaving the Kingsguard when I should have. I have failed everyone I have ever loved.”

“You haven’t failed me,” Tyrion said stubbornly, but Jaime only smiled.

“I have,” he said. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

Tyrion shook his head, though there was a ring of truth to Jaime’s words. Tyrion had always had a blind spot when it came to his brother. But how could he not? Jaime was the only one who had ever shown him any care.

“You’re here now,” he said. “Are you going to go back to her?”

“No,” Jaime answered. Tyrion had never heard him so certain. He wanted so badly to trust his brother. So badly to think that a man like Jaime truly could change.

“Make me believe you,” he said simply, and Jaime nodded.

Chapter Text

Above all else, Robb didn’t want Sansa to be right.

He had made mistakes. He had hurt his family with those mistakes. But he had learned, hadn’t he?

Sansa hadn’t accused him to be cruel, and she hadn’t done it to be petty. He had seen the fear in her expression, and he had understood. There were so many things that were still unspoken between them. There was their mother’s death, and Robb’s choice of wife, and the selfishness that led to their family’s suffering. There was Jaime Lannister, and Robb’s refusal to trade him for his sisters. Robb had blamed himself and hated himself and had survived it, but Sansa hadn’t had the chance. He knew how something like that could burn inside you.

Sansa had been quick to leap to Theon's defense, back when Robb first returned. He saved me, she had said, and maybe she hadn’t even meant to make her voice as damning as it was. He had saved her. Theon, a traitor. And Robb had not. He could understand her capacity for forgiveness. He could understand that she didn’t hate Theon anymore the way that Robb still did. But Sansa had been granted that closure, and Robb hadn’t.

Sansa didn’t hate him, Robb was sure.  But it felt similar to his own inability to forgive their father’s former ward. Sansa couldn’t forgive him because they hadn’t talked about it, because she didn’t understand, because perhaps she never would. Maybe it would always be there between them, this almost-hate that bubbled beneath her porcelain mask.

He had failed his family before, and he had hurt Sansa badly. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her again. Jon had been clever to point out that an attachment to Daenerys wouldn’t be the worst thing, and maybe he had even been right. But Robb didn’t want an attachment to Daenerys. He didn’t want an attachment to anyone but his family and Brienne. He wanted time to grieve properly, and time to heal, and he didn’t want to think about marrying anyone else, let alone loving anyone else. He didn’t want to worry Sansa, and he didn’t want to leave Sansa, and he didn’t want to give her any cause to doubt him anymore.

But…was she right?

His days with Daenerys at Dragonstone and then at Highgarden had been odd and warm and enjoyable. Their conversations often left him feeling more lighthearted than he’d been since he raised his banners and went to war for his family. He and Daenerys had both been under a great deal of pressure to find common ground, and it had been easier than expected. Every conversation felt almost removed from their separate goals. They had been long, rambling, and they touched on so many things that Robb hadn’t felt comfortable discussing with anyone else. They understood each other in a way that felt instinctive, because they had been through things that were, if not similar, than at least parallel. They had been young when they came to power, and they had known betrayals, and they had known loss. They both had to put on brave faces for their people. It was no wonder that those faces slipped around each other. Recognizing each other the way they did.

Gods be good, could Sansa be right?

He would not have called it love, even as he considered Sansa’s accusation more seriously. He would have called it regard. Admiration, at the strongest. He hesitated to call it love. He had been in love once before, and it had nearly ruined him. It had been stronger, more sudden, more intense than what he was feeling now for the Targaryen queen. This couldn’t be love.

But couldn’t it? He had been with her in Dragonstone and Highgarden for weeks. That was as much time as it had taken him to fall in love with Talisa. With Talisa, it had been immediate. An attraction, a draw to her sharpness with him and her kindness for the wounded men on the battlefield. With Daenerys, it had been slow enough to creep up on him. It had taken him by surprise. The first time he met her, he thought that there was not a person he could have less in common with. But now, somehow…he thought of their laughter as she took him high above the clouds. He thought of the soft way she smiled at him when she saw him hugging Arya. He thought of the hurt in her eyes when he stood between she and Brienne on the battlefield, and he thought of the way it made his stomach clench to see it.

You were supposed to be a smarter man than this.

He was supposed to have grown out of this. He had ruined everything once for love. Why had the gods spared him if not so he could learn his lesson and choose better the next time?

It would be a good alliance, Jon had said.

Was that what it boiled down to? He was allowed to care for someone only if they made a good alliance? He hated the thought, and yet…

She was beautiful. She was kind. He did admire her. Perhaps it was love. Perhaps it was only something that could grow into it, if he nurtured it instead of cutting out the roots of it now.

It was tempting. Close himself away. It felt like the honorable choice to destroy the seeds that had been planted so that he could be sure he would not make another foolish mistake. They needed her alliance, but they could get it in some other way. She would not decide to help them or not based on his feelings or lack of them. If he closed himself off now, perhaps he could do it without too much pain.

Your mistake was not in loving her, Brienne had said, once, and she was right. He had not chosen to love Talisa. But he had chosen to marry her. It wasn’t the love that was the problem.

People could love more than once in their lives. Not in the stories, perhaps, but he was certainly too old to believe in those. Love could be true even if it was given to more than one person. It wasn’t a resource that divided itself and lessened itself with each new person to whom it was given. People died. People died, and they left their loved ones behind, but their loved ones moved on and wed again and chose to open their hearts once more. He never thought that he would be one of those people. He thought…

Well. Talisa was dead. Why would he want anyone else? He had been so sure that she would be the only one. He had wanted to die with her, but he hadn’t. He was still alive.

If he was going to lose the war for love. If he was going to fail his family. If he was going to lose the respect of his people. At least he should stay loyal to her memory. At least he should shun the possibility of loving again.

Sansa had been right to look betrayed. He had betrayed her. Her and Talisa both.

She couldn’t be right. He didn’t want her to be right. She was.

He found Bran in the godswood. It seemed to be Bran’s favorite place to be, now. He often stared up at the heart tree just like their father used to, but there was something different about it. Bran’s gaze always seemed so far away. Sansa and Jon and Arya had all tried to explain it. Quietly, separately. Each of their explanations was different from the others. The one thing they all agreed on was that Bran had powers that had proven useful in helping them decide to remove Littlefinger. Sansa and Jon both seemed convinced that Bran was gone. Arya kept saying that Bran just needed to be reminded who he was supposed to be. Robb hadn’t had enough time with him yet to sort out how he felt for himself.

In truth, he had been avoiding Bran. He had left Bran at Winterfell alone. He had left him, and Theon had betrayed them, and Bran had been alone for all this time. There were so many things that Robb should have done for his family. So many people he had disappointed. They were all difficult to look at, but Bran…Bran saw so much, now. Robb didn’t want to know what Bran saw when he looked at him.

Bran smiled when Robb sat down on the rock across from him. It was distant, like everything else, and perhaps Robb was imagining the true mirth he saw there.

“Father used to sit there,” Bran said. His voice was deep and unfamiliar, and Robb missed his baby brother with a fierceness that reminded him of the piercing pain of arrows in his chest. It wasn’t even just the creature that had apparently taken up residence in Bran’s body. It was something else. The lost time and how much bigger Bran was, now. The deepened voice. The changing shape of his face. Robb had missed so much. He had known that coming back to Winterfell would mean seeing everything changed. Everything different from how it was when he left. But he was somehow unprepared for how that would make him feel. Sansa’s chilly distance and Jon’s wounded seriousness and Arya’s sharpness and everything about Bran. It was home. It was. But Robb didn’t fit in it the way he used to, and he was beginning to think that he never would. It wasn’t his place anymore. He had made too many mistakes, and he had been away for too long.

“Father used to spend hours here,” Robb agreed.

“And now it’s you,” Bran continued. It was a serious tone that said his words were about more than just where Robb was sitting.

“I’m trying,” he said.

“I know you are,” Bran replied.

“I just…I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

“No one ever knows if they’re doing the right thing.”

“I was hoping you might help me figure it out.”

A sigh, then. A flicker of annoyance.

“I can’t tell you that,” Bran said.

“Because I have to figure it out for myself?”

“Because I don’t know. That isn’t how this works.”

Of course not. That would be too easy. Robb tried to hide his disappointment, though he had a feeling that Bran wouldn’t have cared if he was disappointed. He looked into the frozen pool instead. The snow around him. The red of the heart tree. He felt like he was at home for the first time since he had returned. It was a particular quality to the air. A crispness that reminded him of his childhood.

There was a time when their mother had been ill when she was pregnant with Arya, and he and Jon and Theon would bring Sansa out to the godswood to distract her. Nobody was bothering with lessons or etiquette with Catelyn so sick and Ned so worried. Sansa had played at being a princess trapped up high in the heart tree, while Robb and Jon and Theon went on missions to rescue her. She always giggled and cheered for them, even as she got shivery with cold. It was always Theon who had to pull her down from her tower, because he was the only one tall enough to reach. She would cling to his shoulders and declare him her Dragonknight, and Robb would act all affronted that she didn’t thank him, too. Once she called Robb and Jon Theon’s dutiful squires, and Theon had laughed so hard at that that it had turned into a genuine scuffle.

It had been years since Robb was so free of responsibility, but the godswood always made him feel young again. Before the wars and his choices and the pain that had followed.

“Do you remember,” he started. He paused. He didn’t even know if Bran was there to remember. I’m not Bran, Bran kept saying, every time someone tried to prompt him to act as Bran would have. Not really. Robb continued anyway. He wanted to say it, even if Bran didn’t remember. “Do you remember before I left Winterfell? I used to come to your rooms at the end of the day. After playing the part of father for hours.”

“I remember,” Bran said. “You were afraid.”

“I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

“I always noticed.”

“I didn’t want you to notice,” Robb admitted with a laugh. “I wanted you to think I was your brave older brother.”

“It was how I knew you were so brave,” Bran admitted quietly. Robb looked back through the trees, towards the castle. He looked at the heart tree again, and at Bran’s face. He had trouble meeting his little brother’s gaze for too long. Part of it was the power that he didn’t understand. Part of it was the shame.

“It was the only place I felt strong,” he said. “With you. It was the only place anything made sense.”

“You’re still strong, even when you aren’t here,” Bran said. “You’ll make the right choices.”

“I thought it didn’t work like that.”

“It doesn’t. But I’m telling you anyway. It’s what you need to hear.”

Robb could not stop his laugh, and he could not stop the way his eyes welled with furious tears. He missed Bran. He wanted Bran back. This three-eyed raven creature wasn’t Bran, but he was close. Bran was in there somewhere. Why was it so difficult for Bran to fight his way to the surface? Why couldn’t Bran just come home?

Robb stood, and he bent down to wrap his arms around Bran.

“I have to leave soon,” he said. “We need to head back to Dragonstone. Her army is already headed there. I don’t know when I’ll be home again.”

“You’ll be home again soon,” Bran said. Robb pulled back to look at him. Bran’s expression was still largely blank, although there was an expression on his face that might have been called a smile, if Robb was feeling generous. “Daenerys knows the stakes.”

Robb ruffled his brother’s hair. Bran sighed again, and quietly fixed it.

Robb headed back to the castle. He felt better, though he knew he shouldn’t. Bran hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know.

When he entered the courtyard, he saw Daenerys standing up on the battlements. It had begun to snow in earnest, and she was watching it fall. The expression on her face was one of girlish wonder, and Robb’s heart clenched. He was an utter fool, to need his sister to point out something that now seemed obvious.

Daenerys spied him watching her from below, and she waved to him. A small wave, fingers curled. Hesitant, but smiling. It was like so many of their interactions at Dragonstone and Highgarden. How had he not realized it? He took the gesture and her smile as permission, and he headed to the stairs. The guards on the wall nodded to him, pleased to see him. Some had already been watching the dragon queen, with fascination or admiration or suspicion. His people were as divided on her as his siblings. Most of the guards were watching Drogon; he had settled down in the snow and appeared to be sleeping under a growing mound of the stuff.

When Robb finally reached her side, he allowed himself a moment to take her in. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were red with cold, and she was dressed strikingly, wearing a black cloak with gray fur around the neck. It was far too long on her, and the fur pressed up against her face, drowning her in it, and she laughed when she saw him failing to smother his smile. It was a young, pealing sound. His heart clenched again. You idiot.

“Your sister made the same expression,” she said. “But she didn’t laugh at me.”

“Sansa’s more polite than I am. They would have been better off giving you something of Arya’s. Or Bran’s old things, perhaps.”

“It isn’t my fault your sister is a giantess,” Daenerys said. Robb grinned and leaned against the wall beside her.

“She’s my height,” he pointed out. Daenerys indicated the difference between them with one pale hand creeping out from behind where she was clutching the folds of her cloak. Robb laughed again.

“She told me she’d have something made for me if I came back, as long as I gave her advance notice,” Daenerys continued. “She’s a shrewd one, your sister. From what you’ve told me, she had to be.”

“She did,” Robb said. His laughter faded as he remembered the betrayed expression on Sansa’s face when she accused him of having feelings for Daenerys. “Is that why you’re up here? Escaping her? I must warn you this is her favorite place.”

“She showed me, actually,” Daenerys replied, looking back out. “I told her I wanted to see the snow.”

“It’s all the same, sorry to say. White. Wet. Cold.”

“Maybe that isn’t exciting to someone who grew up with it, but I can’t imagine ever seeing enough. I almost died in a desert once, you know.”

“So you’ve told me,” Robb replied. He felt drawn in by her. Like this, without their advisors. Without Brienne and Grey Worm standing guard outside the door. The snow was falling fast. Big heavy flakes of it, and it made the rest of the world fade away. It could have been just them. Just them in all the world. Robb wanted that. He wanted to be alone with her. He wanted to be with her endlessly. How was it that he hadn’t noticed until now?

“Everyone talks of the north as if it’s this cold, broken place,” Daenerys was saying. She was still looking out at the snow, as if she could not feel his eyes on her. “But I like it. It’s charming. It feels…steady. In a way I appreciate. There were a lot of reasons for it to distrust me, but it has welcomed me. It has shown faith in me when I wasn’t sure I deserved it.”

She finally met his eyes, and he allowed his smile to grow.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. He understood, of course, that she wasn’t speaking only of the north.

“And I’m glad to tell you,” Daenerys said. She moved closer to him. Her hand inched across the stone to his. She wasn’t wearing gloves, and Robb took it between his, to keep it warm. Because he wanted to take it. She gazed up at him. She was waiting for him to choose.

He wasn’t thinking of anyone but her when he made his choice. He wasn’t thinking of himself. He wasn’t thinking of his mistakes. He wasn’t thinking of anything. You’re a fool, he thought, but he kissed her anyway. Her lips were warm, and she was inviting, and he pulled her closer, into the confines of his cloak, and he was kissing her. He wanted to kiss her. She deserved to be kissed.

When he finally found his wits, he pulled back. Not very far, though he released her hand. She was still looking up at him. Lightly dazed, and smiling.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I hope you don’t mean that,” she replied easily. She knew very well that he didn’t.

“I only...I meant to tell you first. That I admire you.”

“I suppose it’s only fair for me to tell you, then, that I admire you as well.”

“It’s only fair,” Robb agreed. Daenerys pressed herself still closer to him. She looked nothing so much as just…content. Pleased. He liked the look of her like that. It made him ache for something, though he wasn’t sure what. A warmth and safety that he had been missing.

“I doubt I am the only one who has received pressure from my advisors,” she said.

“Davos has mentioned it. Sansa did as well.”

“It would be a good alliance,” Daenerys said. Her expression grew more serious. “But your losses are more recent than mine. I would understand if you…”

“It would be a good alliance,” Robb said. “And I would have wanted to kiss you even if it wasn’t. I may have resisted, because I made love into a mistake the last time I felt it. I’ll never regret her, but…my choices killed her, and they killed my mother. I could not choose another Talisa. Not freely. Not without fearing for my family. This time, I feel…lucky.”

“It’s what I feel as well,” Daenerys said. She had one hand pressed against his chest, and he could feel it through his clothing, and he wondered if she could feel how hard his heart was beating. That aching feeling was back. He was thinking now of Talisa. Of his mother. Of all his men who had died when he made his poor choices. Of Sansa.

“You should know this won’t change anything,” he said. “It isn’t only me I’m thinking of. Our negotiations…”

“This will be added to the negotiations,” Daenerys agreed. “Like everything else. I don’t expect you to fall to your knees because I kissed you. Not you.”

“No,” Robb agreed, relieved. “Not me.”

It won’t be like last time, he told them all. This will be different. I promise.

“We should leave for Dragonstone tomorrow,” Daenerys was saying. She was still looking at him in that way he found he now craved. Please, don’t let this be a mistake. “I’ve made up my mind, and I want to be at the head of our army when we march here to fight the dead.”

Robb didn’t know if Jon had been watching him on the battlements, or if perhaps there was just something in the miserable set of his expression. Whatever it was, Jon saw something. He found Robb in the courtyard and gestured silently for Robb to follow. Robb did.

It was late enough that the kitchens were empty but for a boy delivering freshly chopped wood. Jon waited until he had finished before finding them some cups and some horrid drink he said was a wildling staple. Robb drank it despite the taste.

“I can still tell her no,” he said. “We can still find some other way.”

“Why?” Jon asked.

“I’ll have to give up the crown. The lords won’t like that. They won’t like it either way, that it’s a marriage alliance.”

“Some of them have brought up the idea of it,” Jon said. Robb wasn’t used to this, to Jon’s calm, steady certainty. It was another way Jon had grown up without Robb noticing, and it made Robb feel like a child.

“They have?” he asked.

“Yes. They have. They think she has to make her king out of someone, and they see no reason why it shouldn’t be you. Others of them think you’ve bedded her already. Others think you’re making her fall in love with you to control her.” Jon spread his hands wide, a glimmer of amusement on his face. “You know them as well as I do. They’re a fickle bunch, and they all have their own ideas. You’re never going to make a step that pleases all of them. Not that Sansa’s stopped trying yet, but it always ends in frustration.”

“She’s been dealing with a lot from them, then.”

“Oh, aye. No more than usual. If it’s not you and Daenerys, it’s the grain stores. If it’s not the grain stores, it’s Sansa’s marriage. If it’s not Sansa’s marriage, it’s some empty holdfast or another that some lord wants for himself. It’s endless.” He grew more serious, and he fidgeted with the cup in his hands. “They won’t be pleased with you if you bend the knee. Some of them might have a true grievance with it. Sansa already has a plan to try and make them think it was their idea all along. Seed the idea of it carefully enough that they start thinking on their own that an alliance might be in their benefit, even if it means giving up the crown. Long as we keep some power of our own.”

“Will that work?”

“I don’t know. She seems to think so, and I’ve seen her do something like it before. She has a knack for it.”

“She shouldn’t have to.”

“No,” Jon said, with a sharp look. “She shouldn’t. But she did. And she still does. It isn’t all you, you know. Even if everything had gone exactly as you planned it, she would’ve had to learn some harsh lessons some time or another. But some of the things that happened to her…”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I do. I just…I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know how to make it right. If I tell Daenerys that a marriage alliance is off the table, we can find some other way of…”

“Is that what you think?” Jon asked. “You think Sansa will trust you if you refuse to love anyone else? Forever? Is that what you think will make it up to her?”

“I,” Robb started. It had seemed so obvious, and now it seemed so obviously foolish. He swallowed. “I don’t know. I don’t…what else can I do?”

“I don’t know, but Sansa’s not…it’s not about that,” Jon said. He shook his head. Again it struck Robb as so off-balancing, so unsettling, that it was Jon who had the insights now into Sansa’s mind. Jon, who’d barely ever spoken to her when they were children. “Talisa and Daenerys could not be more different. So you think you love her. It’s a good alliance. It isn’t Talisa again. Sansa wouldn’t expect you to throw that away just to prove that you would, this time.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” Robb admitted miserably. Jon poured more of the drink into Robb’s cup.

“Negotiate,” he said. “Don’t lose your head and give her everything just because you love her. Start with the crown. An independent north. We’re already preparing to lose that, and Sansa will do her work in making sure the northern lords will accept it as much as they can. But Daenerys can’t know that. I don’t care if you love her, and I don’t care if she loves you. Her advisors will push for as much as they can, and she’s spent her whole life convinced that all of Westeros is hers by right.” Jon took in a sharp breath. “Which brings me to another thing.”

Afterward, Robb went back to his room, and his head was swimming. It wasn’t just the drink, but the drink certainly didn’t help. It seemed to him that Jon could have given him more warning about how potent that stuff was.

But it had helped. Drink often muddled his head and made him tired and unfocused, but not this time. This time, it broke down everything, and his conversation with Jon seemed sharp and in-focus.

The legitimate heir to the throne.

He had laughed when Jon first revealed it, thinking it to be some jape, but Jon’s expression didn’t waver, and Robb knew he was serious.

“I don’t want the throne,” Jon had said, “but she might assume I do, and that gives us something to work with.”

It was so like Jon, to offer himself up on a platter. He wanted to remain Jon Snow. He wanted to be Jon Stark. But if Daenerys insisted, and if the terms Robb asked for were too difficult for Daenerys to give, then he was allowing Robb to use him as part of the bargain.

“She told me that she doesn’t think she can have children. She told me she wants the Targaryen line to continue,” Jon had said. “And she wants the throne. She has the army, and she has the dragons, so my claim doesn’t mean anything, but it might mean something to her. I’ll give it up, and I’ll marry whoever I have to, and I’ll give her the Targaryen children she can’t have. Whatever she needs. As long as it keeps Arya and Sansa safe.”

Robb was still reeling. From his words and from his resignation and from the simple fact that Jon was choosing everything that Robb hadn’t, and yet there was no resentment or expectation or anything in the action.

“It’s different,” Jon kept telling him, and maybe it was. But the differences would not stop Robb from hating himself for the ways in which it was the same.

But…negotiation. Jon was right. It wouldn’t solve everything, but words would do little enough to heal what he had broken in his family. It was in actions he would have to prove himself.  

Chapter Text

“Your grace,” Qyburn said again, louder.

She had heard him well enough the first time. He used to be better at reading her moods.

She had chosen him as Hand because she thought they understood each other, but he was turning out to be just like the rest of them. Fawning over her or demanding too much of her, and always doing each at the exact wrong time. If she had anyone else she could replace him with, she would have done it in a heartbeat. But she needed him; he was the only one who had stayed through everything, and she trusted him more than she trusted anyone else.

She closed her eyes. She drew a deep breath through clenched teeth. She turned to face him. She hadn’t answered his initial call because she wasn’t ready to have this conversation. Was he really so stupid that he couldn’t see that? 

Jaime. It had to be about Jaime. Why else would Qyburn use that careful tone with her? The dragon queen has delivered his head at last. That’s exactly what I would do if I had something of hers and she was refusing to engage.

She had seen her father’s corpse. She held Joffrey as he died. She looked upon Myrcella’s bones, and she saw what remained of her Tommen before they took him away. She could not look upon Jaime. She knew he was lost to her. She had accepted that. She would not force herself to see. It would be too much, after everything else she had lost. Tyrion was right. He took it all from me.

“What is it?” she made herself ask.

“Word from Dragonstone,” Qyburn answered.

“A message?” she asked. Her voice didn’t waver. She was apart from her own body. Her fingers tingled as if they had been asleep and were trying again to wake. She tried to call up Jaime’s face, the way he looked when she saw him last. She couldn’t. She could only imagine him in sensations. Glimpses of a much younger and much more golden man. A flash of a smile not yet sharp. Love before she understood it as the weapon it was. Before she grasped and twisted and pulled it into the shape she needed it to be.

A message. His head, perhaps, or his other hand. She had been expecting it. She hadn’t replied to the first attempt. She hadn’t replied to any of the others. She hadn’t sent anyone to get Jaime out, either. She had waited, fortified, safe within her walls. It was what Jaime would have advised her to do. She was safe, and she was in the seat of her power. Their family’s power. She hoped he didn’t suffer too badly. She hoped they killed him quickly. She hoped Daenerys Targaryen had learned that Cersei would not be cowed with petty tricks. At least then Jaime’s death would serve some purpose.

She’d heard only days ago from Qyburn that the dragon queen’s army had left Highgarden seemingly abandoned. Fearing a trap, Cersei hadn’t sent any of her diminished forces to take it. It wasn’t worth the risk. The armies from across the sea would have taken all the food with them when they left, anyway, and the food had been her aim in sending Jaime to take the Reach. Of course the dragon queen would know that. A seemingly empty Highgarden containing yet another ambush would be exactly the kind of trap she would expect Cersei to blunder into.

The food would need to come from somewhere else, then. Her people were starving, and when they starved, they became more difficult to control. Petyr Baelish was an odious little man, and he was rumored to be helping the Starks, but he also controlled the Vale. They would perhaps have some of the food that Kings Landing needed, and Littlefinger was the easiest man to win over with promises of power. Whatever the Starks had that he wanted, she would offer him more. There was value in men who held no loyalty to anyone but themselves.

There was value in men who were loyal solely to her, too. The Mountain. Qyburn. Jaime. But Jaime was lost, and she could not grieve him yet. She would lie awake sometimes and feel a deep blanket of sadness settle over her, but it didn’t feel like grief. It felt like a helplessness that she would not allow herself to feel in daylight. An empty bed. A fading memory of the lines on his face. An awareness that everything had slipped away from her. That she had fought and struggled her whole life to find some shred of power, some safety that could lead to happiness, and it had all been for nothing. It wasn’t grief yet, but it felt like it sometimes.

Qyburn was hesitating. Looking at her oddly. He wore his worry for her on his face. But was he worried about her? About her? Was he worried because he cared even a bit for her welling panic, or was he worried about her capabilities?

There is no one left who cares for you. You don’t need them to care for you. Remember that. It was not anyone else’s voice she heard in those commands, and yet she thought of her father. His steely expression. His cold eyes. His disappointment.

She arched her eyebrows at Qyburn, spurring him on.

“They’re leaving, your grace,” he said. “Leaving Dragonstone. They’re marching.”

“They’re marching here?” she asked. She would not let her tremor of fear show. She would not even allow herself to feel it. She imagined Jaime, outside her walls. Held hostage. On his knees. They would threaten him. They would expect her to do anything to save him. Yes, they would think her so weak. Jaime would not beg for his life. He wouldn’t say anything. He would know her better than that. He would want her to burn them all when his head was cleaved from his neck, and that was exactly what she would do.

“North, your grace,” Qyburn said. The fantasy fell away. Cersei turned to look back out the window as if she could see them out there, bypassing her city. Ignoring her.

“Are you certain?” she asked.

“Yes, your grace.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, your grace. There are conflicting reports. Stories, most of them. Camp tales by drunken, fearful men.”

“Can you at least tell me if they march north as allies? Or are they to be the north’s enemies?”

“Allies, your grace. Robb Stark and Daenerys Targaryen ride together at the head of the army. There are already rumors of a marriage alliance.”

She was missing too much information. People made choices and did things for such incomprehensible reasons. She had laughed at Robb Stark when he was supposed to have lost his head for love of some woman from Volantis. She couldn’t understand his choice, and she couldn’t believe that he had risked everything to marry the girl. Had the man never heard of a mistress? But it taught her something valuable: people made choices that weren’t in their best interests. She had been so used to her father’s logic and his intelligence that she sometimes forgot that Tywin Lannister was an uncommon sort of man.

Ned Stark had been a fascinating creature for that reason. Making every wrong choice out of his fool adherence to his own code of honor. He had loved Robert beyond reason, though. Even he wasn’t as married to honor has he liked to think. His bastard aside, he had looked the other way when Robert made his follies, and he excused them out of love for a brother. She would have hated him for that, even if he never threatened her or the children. But he had taught her such valuable lessons, even so. The extent to which a man’s pride could be used against him. The son, however. He was supposed to be different. Tywin had spoken of his battle prowess with frustration and admiration both, and Cersei believed him. For all his mistakes in choosing love above his duty, Robb Stark was still a shrewd boy, and he would not make such an alliance unless it was necessary.

There had to be a logical reason for both armies to march north. She tried to remember the news that Qyburn had been sharing with her for the past few moons. She had scarcely paid attention; there was nothing in the north that she needed, except perhaps for Sansa Stark’s head, and that could wait until their more capable enemies had been handled. But now the dragon queen was marching north. She had seen something of interest up there. What even existed in that dreary place that required an entire army to fight it? There had been reports ages ago of Wildlings crossing the Wall, but it had been a peaceful resettlement, and she knew that the Bastard of Winterfell had courted them openly, probably to replace their dwindling army after the battle against the Bolton bastard. Perhaps there was an uprising to contend with? Cersei knew enough about the size of the Targaryen army that it seemed absurd to think they would need their full force to fight against a few wildlings, but perhaps the Wildling force was larger than had been reported. Or perhaps…

Stories, Qyburn had said, dismissively. Cersei had heard those stories too, if they were the same ones he spoke of. The dead rising again. Movement beyond the Wall. Qyburn was right to be dismissive, almost certainly, but…well, what else would prompt Daenerys Targaryen to take her entire force north? She had come from across the sea, where it was warm and balmy, warmer even than Kings Landing in the midst of summer. There was every reason to keep her forces south, but instead she marched straight into the land of winter. Why? What else could compel her?

Or. It could be a feint somehow.

Yes, that had to be it. There could be no dead men rising across the Wall. It had to be Daenerys trying to goad Cersei into dropping her guard. She had left Highgarden exposed and no doubt was disappointed when Cersei did not fall for that trap. Now she was making an even bigger show in leaving Dragonstone. She expected Cersei to follow that trail, expected Cersei to try and greedily gobble up the empty castles and leave her own home exposed. Well, the dragon queen had a lot to learn.

“Prepare the Golden Company,” she said. “They should be ready to engage. I’m not convinced she’s marching north at all.”

“Of course, your grace,” Qyburn said, though he hesitated, and she knew that he wanted to bring up the issue of gold again. The Golden Company won’t fight without it, he’d reminded her often enough, and she sent him away and bade him to make more promises she couldn’t keep, but it wouldn’t last forever, and she knew that. She suddenly could not stand the way he said it. Your grace. She didn’t feel very queenly when she couldn’t even feed her own people. She had borrowed too heavily from the Iron Bank to pay for the Golden Company, and that left little for trading across the sea. The Golden Company would protect her, and they would protect Kings Landing, but only for as long as she could pay them. Lannisters always pay their debts, she had told them, but those words would not be enough forever. Eventually they would know. Robert had left the kingdom creaking under the weight of his debts, and the wars of the past few years had ruined it. Everything she tried to do fell apart, turned to sand sifting between her fingers, because everyone around her remained utterly incompetent and impossible to please.

She had too little to her name. Jaime had tried to point it out, but she hadn’t listened. If only he was here, she would listen this time. Too many enemies, and not enough resources. She had wildfire, and there was enough food still coming in from the ports that she would not starve, but the people in Flea Bottom grew restless, and she knew from experience that there was only so much that Goldcloaks could do. She had been in the middle of that riot during Joffrey’s reign. She would not like to be caught in another.

The Mountain, of course, would protect her if it came to it. But would it be enough? Even The Mountain might fall against an army of rioting peasants.

“Have we heard anything from Euron Greyjoy?” she asked. Qyburn hesitated, which meant already that the answer was no.

“His niece and nephew sailed for the Iron Islands with borrowed forces from Daenerys Targaryen, shortly after arriving at Dragonstone,” Qyburn said. “He may be caught in a battle, or perhaps he has triumphed and is on his way here.”

“Yes, that seems likely,” Cersei drawled. She hated to ally with the man, but the stories of that horn were too tempting to be ignored. It was also difficult to ignore the rumors and his reputation, but she was increasingly backed into a corner, and she would be willing to do anything to keep her seat.

For what?

That persistent little voice inside her.

For what? Why? Who are you doing this for? Why do you want it? Your bed is cold. Your children are dead. Your father is dead. Jaime is gone. Tyrion hates you. Your people are starving. There is no one left to love you.

I don’t need them to love me.

They were supposed to love her. She was supposed to be a good queen. Better than Robert had been as king. Why wouldn’t she be? Her husband had been a drunken fool, and she was her father’s true heir. She had languished by Robert’s side for years, afforded no respect and with no one to listen to her. They all thought her weak and vain and foolish, and this was supposed to be her chance to show them her true power. But everything she did…

You have failed. They will remember you as a failure. Father would be ashamed.

That little voice always sounded so much like Jaime. Not Jaime as he had been, once, but Jaime as he had become. Jaime doubting, loathing, enduring her the way she had endured Robert.

If only Tyrion hadn’t killed her son. If only Tyrion hadn’t killed her father.

It was all supposed to be different. The people were supposed to love her the way they had loved Robert. They were fools, the peasants, because they cheered for spectacle and passing gifts of coins, and they didn’t care about the fact that the crown fell steadily into debt. She was supposed to help them realize that Robert had been a poor king, though they had been amused by him. They were supposed to cheer her. She was supposed to make things better than they had been since perhaps before Aerys.

Why? she wondered. Why should I care about what they want? Why should I try to please them at all? What have they done but test me? What have they done but make my life difficult?

It was all supposed to be different.

It was supposed to be exactly like this.

That little voice. That damned voice. She remembered. Melara had been frightened, but not Cersei.

Gold their crowns, and gold their shrouds.

A younger and more beautiful queen.

A younger and more beautiful queen. Westeros had seen so many of them. First she thought it must have been Sansa Stark who took Joffrey, and then it had to be Margaery Tyrell who stole Tommen. Now there was this other one. This other queen had stolen Jaime from her. She meant to take Cersei’s throne, too.

There was always going to be a younger and more beautiful queen. Queens aged and queens faded, and there were queens waiting to replace them. That old witch didn’t know anything. Cersei had spent her life jumping at shadows, and it was for nothing.

Gold their gowns, and gold their shrouds.

How had Maggy known about that? Three children. She married not the prince, but the king. Her husband sired bastards. Three children dead.

A coincidence. No one is going to take your crown.

Someone will. They will take your crown when you die. When your sins catch up with you. When the dragon queen and Sansa Stark team up and take Kings Landing for themselves.

When Daenerys Targaryen cut off Jaime’s head and stuck it on a spike, she would take the very last of what Cersei had loved. His beautiful head. His golden hair gone gray. She should have kept him by her side. Why had she sent him away? She should have locked him in his rooms under guard, kept him there beside her. No matter what he wanted. No matter how he looked at her with disgust. He would have been safe there. She should have been glad that he was there at all, instead of wanting more from him. No one would have stopped him from sleeping in her bed. No one would have stopped him from fucking her.

His accusing eyes. His distant gaze. Yes, why wouldn’t you want him here? He was obviously so pleased to be with you.

Shut up. Shut up. Jaime loves me.

Jaime isn’t coming back.

You sent him away too many times.

Qyburn was waiting for her orders. He was staring at her. She wondered what she looked like. Did she look mad? Did she look as if she was thinking everything over? Her father used to lapse into silence and stare into the fire, and men thought it a sign of his genius. What would they think of her?

Qyburn was waiting. They were all waiting. Didn’t they see that there was nothing she could do? There was no way out of this maze. She had trapped them all. Why did they think she knew the way out?

But she could not allow them to see her weakness. They would take everything from her if they knew.

“The pyromancers,” she said.

“Yes, your grace,” Qyburn said. He understood immediately what she wanted. He always did.

“Good,” she said. “If Euron Greyjoy doesn’t show himself, we’ll have to think of another plan.”

“Of course, your grace,” Qyburn said. He recognized a dismissal when he heard one. She liked him for that, though she found she liked him for little else, lately.

There was always going to be a younger and more beautiful queen, she told herself again. That old witch was nothing but a fraud. You have nothing to be afraid of.

Jaime will be dead. Your family will all be dead.

Not Tyrion. Tyrion is still alive, and he will stop at nothing to end you. He told you. He warned you he would take everything.

“You can try to take it,” Cersei whispered. She stared into the fire. She could imagine the shape of the dragons in the flames, if she looked closely enough. Tyrion laughing while her children burned. Laughing while Jaime burned. He would not have her, too.

Chapter Text

Jaime had known from the start of the trip that it would be a miserable affair to ride a horse from Dragonstone to Winterfell. All that time. All those weeks of travel. He understood the logic of the long march. He understood the reasoning and even relished in the fact that they were going to liberate Riverrun on the way north. It wasn’t even that he liked the idea of being in a ship all the way to White Harbor. But as a man still recovering from a grievous injury, spending weeks in a saddle and sleeping every night on the hard ground would surely be a trial.

The alternative, of course, was to post up in a wagon or litter or carriage of some kind, but he could not endure that a second time. He had capitulated to Tyrion’s nerves and Brienne’s insistence for the trip from Highgarden to Dragonstone, and another journey like it would surely be far worse for his mental state, even if it would be better for his physical injuries.

Tyrion had seemed unlikely to budge on allowing him to ride to Winterfell on his own, but Brienne was softer, and her voice added to Jaime’s own complaints had done the trick and convinced Tyrion to relent. Not that Brienne had shown Jaime much softness since his unlucky confession. An aloof kindness and a wary sort of affection, yes, but she was constantly on guard around him now, her defenses always up, and he had no idea how to fix it. That was one reason to skip the carriage, though it was hardly the most pressing; no, that honor belonged to Olenna Tyrell.

The ride from Highgarden had been a humiliating ordeal for many reasons. Uncomfortable enough on its own, bumpy and slow and jarring his injuries so much that he would have probably been better off walking, but it was the company that made it truly intolerable. Brienne had ridden ahead, occasionally dropping back to check in on him, speaking only ever in that new, stiff way she had. Olenna Tyrell had been his only constant companion in that cramped, hot, overly perfumed space. She confessed to poisoning Joffrey’s wine, and Jaime confessed to not giving much of a shit. It wasn’t all misery. She was an amusing woman, and she told a few stories about his father that Tywin, because they were embarrassing, would have hated to hear recalled. But Jaime was as close to Cersei as Olenna could get, and so of course she delighted in making him squirm with allusions and jokes that weren’t jokes and specific reminders of moments of Cersei’s cruelty, watching him like a particularly ancient bird of prey for defensive flare-ups that he was too tired to give her.

She was sharp-tongued and merciless with him, and it got worse when she saw how Jaime sighed when Brienne very politely stuck her head in and afterward left again despite his best attempts to keep her attention. The old bat was too easily amused, and she saw too much. A horse far away from her carriage was what he wanted for this second trip.

And besides. Brienne would be riding a horse, and he had a vague hope of thawing some of her awkward coldness by reminding her that they did actually like each other, even if she didn’t believe him yet about love. The ride from Harrenhal to Kings Landing had been grim enough, but they had passed it in conversation that grew steadily friendly, and perhaps a renewal of that friendship would help her now. He remembered how it started out of some annoyance that made him desperate to crack her unyielding outer shell. Or perhaps to understand exactly what it was that had driven him into that bear pit to rescue her. He had goaded her into conversation the first time, and the second, and then a third, until finally she no longer needed to be goaded into anything. She told him about the man who taught her to fight. He told her about being knighted by Arthur Dayne. When they heard about Catelyn Stark’s death, some of her spirit had faded away, and he had been sorry to see it go. That didn’t stop him from goading her back into conversation yet again. She could be a miserable conversational partner, but there was something fascinating about her to him, even then, long before he would have called it love.

He had injured her trust in him with his choices on the battlefield, and with his stupid blabbering mouth in Highgarden. But she still liked him well enough to remain his friend, and so he would do his best to fix what he had broken. He wasn’t very good at that. Good at breaking things, yes, but the fixing always seemed to elude him. Maybe that was just because he usually didn’t care enough to try. He had lived most of his adult life letting the people of Kings Landing hate and scorn him for saving their lives because it was easier to laugh it off and pretend it didn’t bother him than it would have been to defend himself. Maybe the same was true now. It would be easier to let Brienne think that his mind had been addled by the medicine and by his injuries. It would be easier to let things heal between them naturally. Forget he said anything. Let her come to trust him again at her own speed. But this time, he felt a compulsion to try. And he had never been very good at not giving in to compulsions.

So he mounted his horse, and he joined Brienne on the road, and he thought to himself that if she could feel how uncomfortable and in pain he was, she would have no cause to doubt his love. It’s all for you, he would say, quite gallantly, and she would frown at him and bully him back into the carriage with Olenna Tyrell. So he stayed silent and rode with his back up very straight and made sure to only grimace when she wasn’t looking.

 She was riding the horse that she had ridden into the Lannister camp at Riverrun. The one he had sent back to her with Bronn that night, after she and the others had got away. It made him smile in the same way her armor did, or Oathkeeper at her hip and in her hand. Some pride that he never thought he had, brought simmering out of him. I gave her that horse. That armor. That sword. He had heard men talk of adorning their mistresses in silk and jewels. He wondered if those men felt like this when they saw those women wearing their tokens. He wanted to laugh at the thought.

More and more he felt the impulse to laugh, to tease, to be as sarcastic as was once second nature to him. It had bled out of him bit by bit after he lost his hand. What little mirth there was had grown harsher. Everything had grown harsher, edged with pain and panic and grief that no one seemed to understand. A loss of himself, of his identity, of everything he thought he was. But it was back in him now, the inclination to laugh at everything. The urge to tease Brienne, both as the woman he wanted and as the friend he adored. The sunlight helped, the first day of their trip blessed by its warming presence. He felt so few shackles tying him still to his sister. A tug, an instinctive pull at his core, at the man he used to be. It was so easy to ignore it. It was so easy now to understand why he had to. It felt like saving himself, and it was so against his instincts, but he wanted to. A good man, Brienne called him, like it was obvious. He wanted to be.

“Where’s the Blackfish in all this, anyway?” he asked. Brienne glanced over at him. Her expression seemed to Jaime to be a mixture of tolerant and confused. Confused that he was so cheerful or confused that he was asking about the Blackfish, of all people. He couldn’t tell.

It was going to be a long few weeks if she regarded every one of his attempts at conversation with so much suspicion.

“He is in the Vale,” she told him, after a pause during which she stared at him long enough to make him vaguely self-conscious. And that’s enough questions from you, her tone said. She looked to the front again. She was keeping a constant eye on Robb and Daenerys where they rode at the head of the party. Robb had insisted that he wanted to ride with Daenerys alone so that they could speak, and so Brienne and Podrick and Davos had been banished further back. Jaime was glad for it. She would never have spoken to him if she was riding with Robb.

Brienne had not avoided him since he confessed his love to her. No, she had returned to his rooms again and again, and she had checked on his progress, and she had smiled and even laughed with him in a way that was entirely unfamiliar to their relationship before the battle. They had spent long stretches just talking, which he never thought they’d do; she was so taciturn most of the time. So withdrawn. But something had changed between them. She understood what he needed in a way that even he hadn’t. She told him of her childhood on Tarth. He told her about some of his earliest tourneys. She shared secrets, and he shared his.

She hadn’t avoided him at all. She had supported him, deepened their friendship, sat beside his bed on his worst days and held his hand or his stump like the two were interchangeable. But she had avoided it. The topic. The very mention of it. He’d tried, a few times. Quiet, probing attempts to remind her. Or clarify. Or just confirm that she heard and understood what he had been saying when he told her in his awful, clumsy way that he loved her. She had dodged him effortlessly every time. Sometimes it was nearly seamless, and sometimes it was hilariously obvious, and always it made him love her more.

He was sure she had loved him. His own feelings had been difficult to figure out, mostly because he had been too big an idiot to understand them, but hers had been plain to see. She had worn them in her expression, and she had worn them in her reluctance to stand against him, and she had worn them nearly every time she had spoken to him since she ran him through with the sword he had given her. But whether those feelings had faded or if they were just newly odious to her after what he had done, it was clear that they had changed.

But then he ran into her in the hall one day, as he was trying to find his way to the kitchens for something to eat. She stared at him openly. She held her sword tight. He realized that it was the first time she had seen him in Highgarden outside his room. Walking around and not confined to his bed or one of the chairs in his quarters.

“You look…better,” she said, surprised, and Jaime had smiled at her. He couldn’t help it. Everything about her made him smile of late. Tyrion seemed to think he was sunk into some kind of agony over her lack of reciprocation, and maybe it was a bit painful, but mostly it was just so funny. He had wasted so much time in loving someone who would never fully love him in return. Not as himself, anyway. Not as anything other than a mirror. And now that he had finally begun to love someone else, someone who would be able to give him all of her heart, he was at a loss. He knew how to be charming. He had never been anything but handsome. And yet those gifts seemed to mean nothing to Brienne. They seemed instead to make her even warier. Almost repulsed. They were all he had, and yet she was made so uncomfortable by them that even trying to deploy them would likely make her sprint in the other direction.

“I am better,” he had answered her, his voice as calm and kind as he could make it. “And the injury isn’t nearly so hideous. Would you like to see it?”

“No,” she had replied. Short and clipped and irritated with him. He had laughed at her. She had turned away, but stopped herself. Lingering, though it was clear she wanted to flee. “I’m sorry. If I have been…if my reaction was…” An acknowledgement of it at last. He knew it for what it was, though she didn’t say it in so many words.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he had replied. For once, he seemed to know exactly what to say to her. “I apologize if my words made you uncomfortable.”

Perhaps it should have hurt more. Perhaps he should have despaired of Brienne ever believing him. But oddly the strongest sensation of all was hope.

They had time now, and he felt free in a way he perhaps had never felt before. His family had always been a wedge between them. His family, and Cersei in particular. Brienne had wanted so much better for him than he knew how to want for himself, and it was only now that he had been bled of Cersei’s influence that he could recognize the way she always used to look at him. You are a good man, she would tell him. You are a man of honor. There had often been a pleading quality to her words, and now he understood the part that had always remained unspoken: despite all the choices you have made.

Yes, Brienne had always believed in him, but she had also always known him, and that required knowing his failures. That she knew them and loved him anyway wasn’t something he had understood until now, until almost too late. But now he did understand. It was not what he had ever understood love to be: acceptance. Patience. Care. Of course those things were love, but love for him had always been the harshest parts of his passion for Cersei, and not the gentler pieces he craved when he had enough awareness to want for himself.

He should have felt more urgent, more despairing, more desperate prove his affections. They were perhaps marching to their deaths. He was quite convinced, anyway, that he would be. He had been granted too many chances, and surely the dead would manage to do what Brienne of Tarth had not. He should be consumed with terror. He should try to set everything right in his last days. Instead, he was content. He was outside, and the sun was shining on him, and he was traveling with Brienne to Winterfell. He was leaving Kings Landing behind. He was leaving Cersei behind, and he didn’t feel conflicted or torn anymore. He was finally going to fight for something that he would choose to fight for. He wished that Brienne understood just how much it meant to him, and he wished that she understood just how much of it was due to her.

Her sword in his gut and those long weeks of recovery with her at his side, yes. His fear and sickness when his desperation finally faded and he realized how close he had come to throwing everything away. The second chance she had given him by refusing to kill him when he thought that there was nothing left for him to do but die. All of those things meant that he owed her. But it was more than just that. It was all of their acquaintance, and the way she always pushed him to be and do and think better. Brienne had had more influence on his life than he had ever realized, long before he was willing to admit it. Returning to Kings Landing after he lost his hand, he had thought that it was only Cersei who had changed. But he had been different, too.

It’s because they took my hand, he thought at first. I am not me without it. But that wasn’t all. It was Brienne, too. Her presence, her friendship, her goodness leeching into him and changing him. Or maybe not changing him. Reminding him of the man he used to long to be. Giving him an excuse to try and become that man again. Believing in him, believing that he could be that man even when he was convinced that it was too late to be anything but hateful.  

“You know,” he said, later that day, after they had stopped for a meal and then got back on their horses again. “I expected you to be a bit more enthusiastic. You told me once that you used to dream of an adventure like this.”

Brienne glanced at him. No smile at the corners of her mouth. No smile in her eyes, either. She looked wearier than she had before the break. He worried.

“Brienne,” he said.

“No one is paying much attention,” she said. She looked away from him. Her back was straight. Her gaze was rigid, directed ahead of her. “When we stop for the night, you could make your escape. Head back to King’s Landing. If you rode hard enough, you might be able to outrun them.”

His stomach twisted. Sank. He stared at her until her face flushed red, aware of his eyes on her even if she wouldn’t meet them. He realized that he was glowering. Was he angry? He wasn’t sure if it was more anger or hurt he felt, but they seemed to go hand-in-hand.

“I’m not going back,” he insisted. She allowed her eyes to meet his at last, too surprised by his tone to keep them away. Her gaze flickered over him as if trying to read him. Interpret his wants and his feelings from a single glance.

“Are you worried she’ll be angry that you lost?” she asked. That question hurt even worse.

“I don’t care how she feels about my losses. It isn’t about that. I don’t want to go back. I want to go north. I thought you knew that…I want to fight for the living. I want to lead the remains of my men in fighting for the Starks, and I want to make up for my crimes against their family by protecting them when it matters most. I want to be here, with you.” He watched her. Understood her. “You don’t believe me.”

Brienne hesitated. She was still looking at him oddly. Podrick was doing his best to outpace them so he would be able to pretend he hadn’t heard. Davos had suddenly disappeared. Jaime felt light, removed from himself. Empty.

“No,” Brienne admitted.

“Even about this?”

“Ser Jaime…”

“Ah, so it’s Ser Jaime again, is it?”

“Jaime, if you like.” Now she was angry too, and he was almost glad. At least he wasn’t the only one. “I know you love your sister. I know that you feel compelled to return to her now, when she needs you most.”

“I am not compelled by my sister any longer,” Jaime said. “I am not compelled by anyone but you.” Brienne didn’t look away as he had assumed she would. She started, as if he had said something shocking, but she didn’t look away. How could she not see? How could she not understand that he loved her? It had taken him so long to realize it, but he had always been an idiot about love. He had assumed she would be better. What a sorry pair they would make, if they ever made it any farther than this. “You’re going north for very honorable reasons, but I don’t need them. I’m going north for you. I’m going north because the man you think I am would go north to do the right thing.”

“You’re going north because it is the right thing.”

“See? Exactly.”

“Please don’t…”

She bit off her last words, and Jaime waited, one eyebrow arched.

“Don’t what? Speak so loudly? You’ve said nothing foolish; I’m the only one making an ass of myself. Or would you perhaps like me to stop being so obvious? Or is it even that you wish I wouldn’t follow you north like some eager, panting mutt? I admit it paints a rather pathetic picture. Would you rather I return to my sister to be burned alive when Daenerys sets her sights south? Or do you think things will go so poorly in the north that I will be safer with Cersei on the throne while the rest of you stubborn warriors try to save us cowards from the end of the world?”

She was conscious now, at least, that she had hurt him. He could see her realizing it. She sighed.

“Forgive me,” she said.

“There’s nothing to forgive. If anything, it should be me asking for your forgiveness, but I find myself growing short every time you accuse me of something. However much I have earned your doubt and your scorn.”

“You haven’t. I am only…wary.”

“Yes. I know that. You cannot believe me. Not about this. Not about…other things I have said.”

She flushed even deeper. She continued to stare straight ahead, at the unruly mane of Robb Stark’s curls. Jaime felt vaguely, horrifically self-conscious. Maybe her affections had changed after so long apart. She had loved him once, but that was when he was the only man who had ever shown her any friendship, by her own admission. There were other options, now. People were finally realizing what a wonder she was. Perhaps she preferred a younger man. She had loved Renly, who was young, and who had always been too pretty for his own good. Jaime had been pretty once, he was sure, but he’d grown more weathered. Perhaps he wasn’t as handsome as he used to be. Robb was handsome. He was young, too. Younger than Brienne, but perhaps that was what she wanted. Perhaps she didn’t want some old, crippled oathbreaker following her around.

“No,” she admitted. “I cannot believe you. Not yet.”

The yet so quiet, so drawn out of her, as if she was unwilling to say it but unwilling to keep silent, too. No word had ever been such a relief.

“I have some work to do, then,” he said. She shook her head. He could see amusement now, though. She was confused by his attentions, but she trusted him at least enough that she didn’t assume he was making sport of her. “Would it help if I told you that I informed Robb and Daenerys of the wildfire?”

“The wildfire? Didn’t Tyrion tell them? And your sister already blew up the sept. I think they might have known about the wildfire from that.”

“I can never tell if you’re being amusing on purpose. My sister had been ordering more of it made by the time I left for Highgarden. She wanted caches of it. Just like Aerys. No plans to use them yet, but that doesn’t mean she won’t. She was growing more paranoid. She pretended at feeling powerful, but I knew she was frightened. I told myself that I would do something about it when I returned. Reason with her, perhaps. Or try and remove her from the throne if I could not. I probably wouldn’t have done anything.”

“You can’t know that.”

“You have to admit it would be consistent.” Brienne didn’t argue. Just sighed. He said, “I told them not to attack the city directly with dragon fire. Even if they manage to get the people out beforehand, the wildfire could be anywhere. She may be willing to lay a trap while using innocents as bait. Wildfire could take the whole city out if she has enough of it. You should have seen what it did to the sept.”

He thought of the view from Cersei’s balcony. The sept still smoking. He imagined her standing there, watching it. Smiling. Just like Aerys. He looked down at his hand on the reins, and at his maimed arm resting beside it. His stump was ugly and naked, the skin still gnarled and scarred. He had thought of wrapping it in something to hide it, but leaving it bare felt like defying Cersei, and sometimes looking at it was oddly what he needed to feel whole.

“It was good to warn them,” Brienne said softly, and he felt the pleasure of her approval tingle through him, the way it always did. He nodded, but didn’t raise his eyes.

“I’m glad you think so.” He waited, but she was silent, giving him time to think. He spoke, instead. “I don’t want her on the throne.”

Brienne glanced about to make sure that no one else was near. No one was; Brienne may have been oblivious to it, but most people saw the way he looked at her and stayed well enough away from their conversations. They jeered and called her Kingslayer’s Whore and he The Beast Woman’s Pet, but not where either of them were supposed to hear. They were careful about that, at least.

“You cannot stop Daenerys from taking the throne, Jaime,” Brienne said. Jaime rolled his eyes.

“You must be doing this on purpose.”

“Doing what?”

“Being oblivious. I refuse to accept that it’s natural. My sister. I don’t want my sister on the throne.” She looked at him. He knew she didn’t know what to say. “I don’t want her to suffer. I don’t even want her to die, but I know she won’t give up the throne easily, and I don’t want her to rule. The throne has destroyed her. It destroyed my family. It destroys everyone who touches it.”

“That’s not true,” Brienne said. He laughed at her.

“I know I don’t need to tell you of all people that life is not a song, my lady. Surely you’ve learned that by now.”

“It has nothing to do with that. There have been good queens and good kings.”

“And good knights and good ladies, too. There have also been bad. And even those very good kings and queens have been softened by the years and the stories. It isn’t the starving peasants who write histories. It isn’t the conquered nations, either. It’s the acolytes and worshippers, and they leave things out. The Targaryens have such a glowing historical record, written by the people who flourished under their rule. You can’t really think that we know the whole truth? Time obscures all of it. Tell me, when you paint me as an honorable man to the people you meet, do you tell of the wicked things I’ve done to balance it out, or do you insist only in sharing the honorable?”

She blushed. It was answer enough.

“I take your point,” she said.

“Daenerys may mean well. I don’t know. Aerys probably meant well once. I would say it must be my age that’s made me cynical, but people far older than me fall for the same traps that the naivety of the young allows them to stumble into. I imagine you’ll be the same when you tell my tale after I’m gone. Stubbornly clinging to memories of an honorable man even when you know your recollection to be prettier than the reality.”

Her expression when she looked at him was so annoyed as to be almost offended, and he laughed.

“I don’t expect I’ll live much longer,” he continued. “Either I’ll try and fight the dead with my off-hand and take a sword from a walking corpse less invested in my survival than my last opponent, or I’ll survive somehow and be executed alongside my sister when the dragon queen takes her throne.”

“And you think I would allow that to happen?” Brienne asked. He hated how low his stomach swooped at the possessive edge of her voice.

“If she ordered it, you wouldn’t have a choice. I killed her father. I supported my sister. I harmed the Starks, as well, and if their alliance is turning more personal, as anyone with eyes can see, executing the Lannister twins together would be a smart choice.”

“I would not allow it,” she said again. It was so easy to imagine. Brienne calling for a trial by combat. Standing as his champion. She’d probably fight one of those bloody dragons for him. She’d probably fight all three.

“And I would not allow you to risk your life for mine,” he said sincerely. Brienne looked away. He could see the way her cheeks pinked. She liked when he was earnest with her. He smiled. “Promise me,” he said. “If it comes to that…”

“I will not,” Brienne said. He laughed again.

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask!”

“You were going to ask me to be the one to do the honors,” she sneered. His smile softened.

“No. I’ve learned my lesson on that. I was going to ask you to swear not to do anything foolish. And if it has to happen, I was going to ask you not to watch.”

She was startled by that. Her expression cracked at last. That cold warrior’s mask she had worn around him of late. He had become adept at seeing behind it, because he watched her so carefully, but now he would not need the skill. Her brow pulled down. Her mouth opened. Her eyes narrowed. Her chin quivered just slightly, the way it had when she left Kings Landing.

“You will not die,” she said.

“You cannot stop it,” he pointed out. She shook her head.

“I have so far,” she replied, and he laughed again.

“You’ve done a fine job. But even you can’t do the impossible. Brienne. I’m not the fighter I used to be. I’m not the man I used to think I would be when I was given a knighthood. I have wasted all the chances I have been given. I’m not anything anymore. I’m not Kingsguard. I’m not my sister’s thrall. I’m not the Lion of Casterly Rock. I’m an old soldier with one hand who just wants to follow one more good commander into one more good battle before he dies. That it’s with you is…” he broke off, willing her to believe him. She was watching him like she wanted to, but also like she couldn’t. He thought of what he had said to her about stories. You of all people should know that life is not a song. How many men had earnestly begged her for her affections? How many men had plainly and without poor intentions told her that they loved her? He imagined it likely wasn’t many. They were all fools, as he had been once.

No, she didn’t believe him. But he was alive, and free, and the sun was warm despite the falling flakes of snow. Winter arriving at last. She didn’t believe him, but she loved him, and she wouldn’t turn him away.

There wasn’t much time to convince her. He truly did believe he would die in the battle to come. But there were weeks left on the road. He would find a way to make her believe him eventually.

He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Hesitant, but true. It would be enough for now.

Chapter Text

Daenerys rode a pretty grey mare as they traveled from Dragonstone back to Winterfell. Robb had suggested, along with several of her advisors, that she might be more comfortable flying ahead and waiting in Winterfell for the armies to arrive, but she had only laughed at them. She would ride at the head of her army. Now, more than ever, it is important that they have faith in me, she said. Her voice had been strong and sure, and none had argued with her.

Robb was glad to have her near, of course. She smiled at him every time she looked his way and found that he was already looking back at her. She looked up to the sky and watched her dragons wheeling above, playing in the clouds. They could be heard roaring sometimes, and Robb knew that their party would not meet much trouble on the road from bandits.

Riding one of them had been indescribable. Now that he was back on the ground, it seemed impossible to him that he had done it. He could remember it so clearly, could remember his fear and the way his stomach swooped low and the sharp slap of the wind against his face, and yet it was as if it was something that had happened in a dream. Like the trees in the fog and the image of Bran trying to speak to him and the other formless nightmares that eventually left him with time. Except this hadn’t been a nightmare at all.  

Davos had asked, once Robb and Daenerys returned from Winterfell, what it had been like. Brienne had been icy and disappointed and refused to ask any questions, but Davos had been like a child. Curious and a bit giddy about it. Robb had been honest—it was only fun for a few hours, and then it started to feel like riding a very tall, very scary horse. Slightly more uncomfortable, and infinitely more dangerous. But the distance they were able to cover in so short a time...

And Daenerys. She came alive on the back of her dragon. She had shown off a bit, urging Drogon to dip and weave and spin while Robb clung to her and she laughed delightedly. On the way back from Winterfell, with their regard well established, he had used it as an excuse to press his face against her neck, make her shiver.

But when they returned to Dragonstone, they also returned to their responsibilities, and Robb remembered.  Not only because his sworn sword was so angry with him, although of course Brienne’s ire served as a sharp reminder. Mostly it was just that everything was different. There was no more time to negotiate at their own pace. They were at the mercy of their advisors and the voice of Sansa that lived now in Robb's head, reminding him of the promises he had made the night before he left Winterfell.

Promises and tears and apologies. It had been difficult without Jon to mediate, and though Robb had been frightened at first of causing Sansa anymore hurt, the conversation had been smoother than their first about the subject. Sansa spoke her mind, and he spoke his, and it was as if they had existed, for a brief time, in a world apart from everyone else. A world where the past could not hurt them and the future would not matter. He spoke of his losses, of his choices, of his regrets. She spoke of choice more as a lack, and she cried as she remembered the things she said and did when she was too young to know better.

She had shown him, with trembling fingers pushing up her sleeves, some of the scars that she had been left with, and then they both had cried. In the light of day, they’d suffered a shared embarrassment to meet each other’s eyes, because there was something about their relationship that felt too fragile for open weeping in one another’s arms, and yet that was exactly what they had done. He felt better about it now. Felt better about a lot of things, but he felt more clear with Sansa than he had. He could hear her voice and he could understand her arguments. She sounded strong and sure in his head. He had already been resolved to negotiate as carefully as he could, to ensure the continued safety of his family, but he felt less nervous about the outcome now. He wouldn’t fail. Not again.

He was glad with what he had managed, and he knew that Daenerys had respect for his position now in a way she hadn’t before. They worked out most of what they would try to accomplish on the flight back from Winterfell, and Robb holed up with Davos immediately on their return, making certain that his Hand was prepared for negotiations with Tyrion.

The wedding would help, but Jon was right. It wasn’t only words that would ensure his sister’s safety. He would make sure that she, along with the rest of his family, would have the closest thing to an independent north that Daenerys would be willing to grant, and he made sure that they would feel safe in their own home. He had been afraid that he tipped his hand too much by admitting his feelings for Daenerys. He had been afraid that she would not hesitate to use those feelings, or to try to use those feelings, to try and make him give up more than he wanted to give.

But there was no mistaking her hand in things. Tyrion was frustrated, and he drove a hard bargain, but he was softer than he would have been otherwise. It was easy to see that Daenerys wanted things to proceed in the same way Robb did.

They proceeded quickly enough. Though Robb knew he was at a disadvantage, having fewer people to advise him and less power overall, Davos proved a good asset to have at his side. Brienne, too—once she was speaking to him again—proved an excellent friend to have, as ever, though she continued to doubt herself when it came to negotiations and discussions about power.

In the end, each party was as satisfied as they could be, and Robb felt a thrill of confidence that had become unfamiliar to him. It was a good reminder to have–he could actually do this. He could be a good king. It wasn’t all failure.

All while they negotiated and talked and compromised over things that seemed unimportant next to the dead, like titles and names and crowns and succession, the secret of Jon’s status hung there. When he eventually used it, it had exactly the impact Jon said it would. Daenerys was concerned, angry, but eventually pleased when she realized that Jon’s legitimacy meant that the Targaryen line would not need to die with her, even if she was right about being unable to bear children. She was even more pleased when Robb told her in no uncertain terms that Jon had no plans to challenge her for the crown.

After that, things halted until they could get back to Winterfell, but Robb felt lighter. Preparations for the journey flew by. They were constantly busy. That was the strangest part; after weeks of careful talks, there was suddenly no longer any time for conversation. There was only time to plan, and prepare, and march. It would take them weeks to make the journey that he and Daenerys had made in several days, but it felt somehow felt like it would be over far sooner.

They would be marching against the dead. Many of the soldiers had taken to calling it The Last War, which wasn’t exactly good for morale, but Robb couldn’t deny the accuracy of the feeling. A last war. A last stand. There were times when Robb turned in for the night—often late into the night—when the weight of it, the responsibility, the uncertainty, became almost too much to bear.

Most of the soldiers had already begun the march back to Dragonstone from Highgarden by the time Robb and Daenerys returned from Winterfell. The hostage Lannister army and the remains of the Tyrell forces were still lingering with most of the Dothraki and several companies of Unsullied as their guards. Almost all of the Lannisters had pledged to serve Daenerys, which Olenna Tyrell was quite smug about. Jaime Lannister had, with very little fuss or ceremony, declared his men for the Targaryen queen, and none of them seemed disposed to break with him. Olenna would be making the journey to Riverrun; the remaining Frey loyalists there would be turned out shortly by Brynden Tully and an army from the Vale, along with the first waves of the Unsullied, who would meet with them outside the castle. Edmure Tully would be re-installed as lord of Riverrun, and none of them had any doubt that he would welcome any of the dragon queen’s people who would not make the march north. Everything was progressing nicely, and Robb had no complaints, except…

It had been different, when it was just the two of them.

Being back at Dragonstone reminded Robb that he was still a king beholden to his people. It reminded him yet again that Daenerys wasn’t just a woman, but a queen who commanded a massive army and three dragons. They still knew so little about her, and even what seemed like a good alliance could turn out to be a dangerous one in time. She was a Targaryen! Her father had burned his grandfather and uncle, and there was nothing to stop her from doing the same. He didn’t want to think about those sayings about Targaryens and their propensity for madness; he cared deeply about two Targaryens, and he wanted to believe that those stories were just that. He could hope that the madness in their blood was ambition and greed and the paranoia of challenged rule as opposed to a diseased mind. He could tell himself those things, and he could convince himself not to worry, but he had to acknowledge the possibility that it could all be a mistake. He had made fatal errors before. He could not afford to be pulled in by her beauty and by his feelings. He had been so sure that he wasn’t. He had been convinced that they were simply lucky, and of a similar mind, and that their marriage would solve problems in addition to being the thing he wanted.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t still sure that he was right. It wasn’t that he was having doubts about her. But that was the problem; it would be so easy to be a fool about her. It would be so easy for him to fuck everything up again by trusting too much that she wasn’t playing him in exactly the right way.

He had watched as Daenerys greeted Jorah Mormont, who had arrived in Dragonstone when she and Robb were in Winterfell. Robb knew of Jorah, knew that Daenerys cared for the former smuggler deeply, and that she had missed him while he was gone. He saw the way Jorah’s eyes glimmered, and the way Daenerys held him close.

Davos teased him about jealousy, after, apparently sensing something in the way that Robb was watching the reunion. But it wasn’t jealousy that Robb felt. It was wariness, more than anything else. It was easy to see the way Daenerys inspired devotion, and now he was planning to marry her. Was he just the latest in a line of men to fall for the beautiful dragon queen, with her guileless eyes and her kind smiles? Was he a tool to her? Had she seen his weaknesses and his wants and used them against him?

She had fought for years to get to Westeros. She had sacrificed everything. He’d heard her describe it many times. Even in that first disastrous meeting, he’d been quite able to see the spine of steel that existed beneath the pomposity that her advisors had convinced her to wear like armor. He had thought that their second meeting was a glimpse at her true self, but what if it wasn’t?

Gods, he wondered. Why does anyone want to be king? Why does anyone want to rule anything? It was all so fucking complicated. All he wanted was to be in Winterfell with his family. It was all he had wanted after he returned and found that his siblings did not hate him, that they welcomed him, that they wanted him back. And then he had traveled to a cold castle on a cold island and he met a woman with so much fire that it filled the hole that had been inside him since he watched his wife die.

Had he been so easily won?

He watched her as she rode. Brienne was somewhere behind him; he could hear the Kingslayer’s voice needling her into short, sharp bursts of conversation. Jorah Mormont was probably somewhere near them, watching Robb as carefully as Brienne had been watching Daenerys of late. There were eyes on both of them up here, at the front of the column, as there had been eyes on them from the beginning of the ride. It was more important than ever that they look united.

Daenerys was looking up at the sky. Laughing. Robb’s eyes followed and saw the way her three dragons played together. They weren’t as frightening so high up, and her laugh made her girlish. Young. He cared for her deeply, and he worried about that care. It had cost him so much last time. Jon had seemed surprised when he asked if Robb thought the answer was to never open his heart again. Never give in to love. Prove his loyalty to his family by swearing off anything stronger than friendship. But…yes, Robb had wanted to say. Yes, obviously. That’s the only thing that makes sense. 

Daenerys caught his eye again, and she smiled at him again. She was made softer by her smiles. Softer, and warmer too. They hadn’t shared another kiss since the one on the walls of Winterfell. There hadn’t been time, and both Brienne and Grey Worm had been reluctant to leave them alone again, especially together, convinced that they would take the opportunity to vanish again.

Robb could remember the way that she had laughed at herself on the walls at Winterfell, Sansa’s borrowed cloak too long and too big. She had looked up at him, and her eyes had sparkled with amusement. She hadn’t been a queen, then, and he hadn’t been a king. He would have wanted to kiss her anyway. Would she have wanted to kiss him?

He smiled back at her.

It’s happening again, he told himself. You’re failing again.

This is different, he promised.

They stopped for the night and set up camp. This was the closest they would get to Kings Landing, and so the preparations were tense, and quiet, and the guard rotations much more populated than they had been the other nights. Varys was certain that Cersei hadn’t moved her armies to intercept them, but Tyrion was convinced that Varys was underestimating her, and so it was no surprise to Robb to see the guard details so heavy, especially around the captured Lannister soldiers.

Robb had forgotten how slowly an army could move, and Daenerys had more than just an army. Several companies continued on to clear the road ahead, but the majority of her people were non-fighting forces. Some had stayed at Dragonstone with a small garrison. Some had sailed to the Iron Islands to throw in with the Greyjoys. Most of her people were making the trek to at least Riverrun, and some would continue on to Winterfell to serve as nurses or stewards, or to fight in some capacity. Now, they were all together, clustered in a huge mass that seethed and moved slowly northward.

Jaime Lannister was arguing with his brother. Brienne watched them, though she pretended not to, like examining her stew as she ate it required all her concentration. The Lannister army was going to be camped on the outskirts with the Dothraki, and Robb gathered that Lannister wanted to camp with them.

“Let him,” Brienne said, interrupting Tyrion’s tirade. Robb hadn’t really been following the argument, but he found it strange that Lannister’s face fell, though Brienne had taken his part. The Kingslayer looked at her with what could only be described as betrayal, but it turned quickly to a sneer.

“Good,” he said. “If it will prove it to you, yes. You should let me camp with my men.”

Brienne rolled her eyes. Her skin darkened into a flush, and she went stubbornly back to her dinner. The Kingslayer lingered, ignoring his brother’s continued arguments that Jaime should be recovering in a real tent, Tyrion’s tent, rather than slumming it with his soldiers. At least, Tyrion argued, he should be in the infirmary tent with the rest of the wounded. Jaime was far better than he had been, but he still wasn’t back to his strength. Robb grew more amused as the one-sided conversation continued. Tyrion had yet to notice that his big brother wasn’t listening; Jaime was too intent on trying to meet Brienne’s eyes. On any other man, it might have looked pathetic, but it was Jaime Lannister, and he somehow made even desperate pining look attractive.

It was hard to laugh, anyway, because Robb had to wonder: am I any better?

At least Daenerys openly returned his affections. Robb knew Brienne cared for the Kingslayer, but she had built up a wall between them since the battle at Highgarden. Robb had expected her to be joyous when Jaime renounced his sister and swore his armies to help their cause, but she had barely even smiled. She had nodded at him, and there was respect in her gaze, but there seemed to be little else. The Kingslayer had done all the smiling for her.

Daenerys at least returned Robb’s smiles. Encouraged them.

Then again, wasn’t that half the worry? That she was faking those? Brienne didn’t have the art to do that. Maybe that was why the Kingslayer looked so pleased every time he managed to win one, no matter how small it was.

Jaime finally stormed off, giving up on both Brienne and his brother, it seemed. Tyrion glared at Brienne and started towards her. Robb was briefly distracted by the sight of Daenerys exiting her tent with Grey Worm, Varys, Jorah, and Missandei. She spoke to each of them in turn. Calmly, quietly. They scattered to carry out whatever her orders had been.

“It’s not our place to keep him here,” Brienne was saying.

“He is a prisoner. It is exactly our place.”

“If he wants to go back to her, we aren’t...”

“I know you know the meaning of the word prisoner, Lady Brienne, and yet you are being deliberately obtuse.”

“He’ll get himself killed trying to get back to her if we stop him,” Brienne said calmly, speaking over Tyrion’s ire as though it didn’t bother her, though Robb could see the tension in her back.

“You can’t be so heartless,” Tyrion said.

“Heartless?” Brienne asked. “You’re naive!”

“Tyrion.”

Daenerys had appeared. She was smiling a questioning smile at her Hand. Brienne scrambled to her feet to offer a bow, with Podrick copying her a bit more slowly, and a bit more clumsily.

“Your grace,” Tyrion said, over the clatter of Podrick dropping his spoon against the stone he’d been seated on. “My brother seems determined to punish himself by sleeping with his men. I apologize for the raised voices.”

“No need for apology,” Daenerys said. Her expression was amused, if slightly stiff. “I’ll order him closely watched. If he means to escape, my men will stop him. Or perhaps my dragons. Either way, he won’t make it far enough to warn your sister, if that’s what you think he means to do.”

Brienne’s eyes flickered up from where she had trained them on the ground. Her brow clouded. Tyrion went silent. Robb tried to catch Brienne’s eye, but she would not remove her gaze from Daenerys.

“I’ll speak with him again,” Tyrion said, and he hurried away. Robb tensed, thinking that Daenerys would speak to Brienne, next. But if Daenerys had heard Brienne’s words about the inevitability of Jaime’s escape, she didn’t give any indication. She strode up to Robb instead.

“I’d like to speak with you as well,” she said gently. “I have a few more things to attend to. But you’ll find it comfortable to wait in my tent, I hope?”

Robb nodded. Daenerys smiled. She moved away, and Grey Worm followed. Brienne was gripping her spoon tight, staring after her.

“Maybe next time, leave the overseeing of prisoners to someone else,” Robb said, trying to joke. Brienne breathed out a strangled sound.

“I didn’t mean…” she started. Robb put a hand on her shoulder.

“I know,” he said. “I know you only want to protect him. But he can’t be allowed to leave. And he doesn’t want to leave, anyway.”

She shook her head.

“He’s going to try to go back,” she said. Her voice was low and utterly certain. Robb wondered how it was possible to be so close to someone, to know someone so well, and still fail to understand them so completely. 

Robb was still thinking of Brienne when he entered the tent. Daenerys traveled with more luxury than he was used to, but the inside of her personal tent was less opulent than he had expected. He liked it. It settled his nerves some after that odd conversation by the fire. The table in the center had a map with tokens on it, and he picked up one of the wolves that sat in Winterfell. He grimaced when he saw that she had placed a dragon there, as well. Jon. She would be disappointed if she expected Jon to be a dragon.

He was thinking of Brienne because Brienne was honorable, because she made the right choices, because she was blind. Anyone could see the way in which the Kingslayer sought her audience and approval, but Brienne continued to turn away. At first he thought her unfeeling, or perhaps simply too honorable to consider her own emotions when there was too much bad blood between the Lannisters and the Starks, but after the display at the fire, he knew exactly what it was: a lack of trust.

Assuming the worst. Believing the worst. It was a form of self-protection, and it was exactly what he was doing with Daenerys. Denying himself because he didn’t trust that something so good could happen to him. Or perhaps denying himself because he didn’t believe that he deserved it.

Brienne believed that Jaime Lannister would return to his sister despite all evidence to the contrary. They had passed closer to Kings Landing than they ever would when they were making the trek back to Dragonstone from Highgarden, and he hadn’t made the attempt then. His wounds were not so grievous that they would stop a man truly determined to get back to the woman he loved. Robb remembered his fierceness from years ago, when he was imprisoned in the Stark camp. Jaime had fought against his captors. Killed his captors. He had done anything to try and get back to his sister. Nobody had chained him up this time, and still he was staying. Why was Brienne so certain he would leave? Because it was easier to be certain of failure than it was to accept the terror of the possibility of success?

If he was right about Daenerys…it was too easy. He would love again. He would be making the right choice for his people. He would gain a strong ally. They would fight the dead and take Kings Landing. She would be a good queen. As a child, he would have had no problem believing in that kind of goodness if it appeared in one of Old Nan’s stories, but he wasn’t a child anymore, and he had become too used to the fact that life had no happy endings. He didn’t believe in those kinds of tales anymore. So he couldn’t possibly be right about Daenerys.

And Brienne. She had been taunted and mocked and derided. He had heard the men in his own camp doing it. He had heard the men at Dragonstone and Highgarden doing the same. After the battle, some of that talk had died down, after she proved herself and fought better than any of them, but for some men, it only made them worse. A woman as tall and broad and unconventional as Brienne would have heard everything of scorn and of disgust, and not nearly enough of the kind of earnest longing that was reflected on Jaime Lannister’s face every time he looked at her. Why would she believe it? How could she believe it? Robb had not known Cersei Lannister long, but he hadn’t needed to know her to see how beautiful she was. How could Brienne convince herself that Jaime Lannister was choosing her when the world at every turn had told her that that would be impossible? 

And for Robb…what had Robb done to deserve the happiness that would come with a queen and a wife like Daenerys? What had Robb done to earn that? He hadn’t. He had made all the wrong choices and somehow blundered into success. Why wouldn’t he be suspicious?

By the time Daenerys entered the tent alone to see him, his mind had been altered. Now she looked as soft as she ever had, and he could see things that he had not noticed before. The slight hesitation. The nervousness. The way she drew herself up taller when she saw him watching. Her smile was genuine, and it was a full smile, but he could see a trembling nervousness behind her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before.

She was nervous, too. She was putting faith in him, too. She had been burned before, same as he had, and she was slow to trust, same as him. Same as Brienne.

“Where are your handmaids?” he asked. She smiled at him. She moved to the other side of the table, standing across from him.

“In the next tent,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you, first. And it doesn’t do me any favors among your people, when they see me being pampered. It reminds them too much of their current queen.”

Robb nodded. He hadn’t thought of that, but of course that was something that Varys or Tyrion would have mentioned to her. He had found it disconcerting, the first few times he spoke to her. There were always women around her, ready to take on any burden. Little things that she hardly even seemed to notice.

“If that’s the only thing that reminds them of Cersei, then you’re doing something right,” he said, which made her laugh. She toyed with one of the dragon figurines, which was placed on the road. “What’s wrong?” he asked her. She looked up at him, smiling a bit.

“Nothing is wrong. Everything is proceeding as planned.” She laughed again. “I’m just so tired of dealing with all of it. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “You frightened Brienne out there.”

“If she really thinks her Kingslayer means to try and escape back to his sister, she should be frightened.” Daenerys picked up the lion token that was with her dragon and his wolf. She nudged it closer to the front of the line. “Luckily, she’s wrong.”

“You have so much faith in him?” Robb asked. Daenerys arched an eyebrow at him, and he smiled. “I think you’re right. But I’m surprised to hear you say it.”

“Why? Because he killed my father? Maybe at one time that would have been the only thing that mattered, but…Tyrion was right. To remind me. I am not my father. I have no wish to be. But it isn’t about that, anyway. Jaime Lannister wants the same things we want: he wants to destroy the Night King. He wants to live a life he can be proud of. He wants to make up for his past mistakes. Everyone’s motivations have to be called into question in any other war, but not this one. This one’s simple.” She adjusted a few more of the tokens on the table, moving the Blackfish closer to Riverrun. Optimistic, Robb thought, and it made him smile.

“Simple,” he repeated.

“Well, you know what I mean. In one sense of the word.”

She finally came around the table to stand in front of him, and she looked so different from the woman she had seemed to be out there, among her people. He felt cheered to see it. This version of Daenerys. The Daenerys he was allowed to see. It wasn’t this woman who was an act. It was her mask around the others that was false.

“I do,” he said.

“I wanted to speak to you, because I wanted to see you,” she said. “That’s simple, too. Tyrion and Varys can give me all the advice about dealing with you that they want. Jorah and Missandei are nearly as bad. But I don’t want them here right now. We don’t need everything to be a negotiation, do we?”

“We don’t,” Robb agreed, his smile growing. “Everyone is watching us. Always.”

“I had gotten used to it at one point, I think, but it feels different with you.” Daenerys was thoughtful as she looked at him, frowning. “Just one of many ways you’re different from any man I’ve been with. I don’t want them to have any part of this.” She seemed oddly shaken by it, delicate. He smiled, to let her know that he appreciated it. It felt like quite a lot of pressure, suddenly, to be the person that could make Daenerys Targaryen pause. To be the person who could make her forget her responsibilities and her duties. Who could make her want to escape the thing she had been fighting half her life to get, even if it was only a temporary escape in her tent for a few moments. There was a power in that. If he was a worse man, perhaps he would take advantage of that power. “It worries me too, sometimes,” she said, quiet. “That you come along so easily. You aren’t asking for very much.”

“I’m asking for what my family needs, and what my people expect of me,” Robb pointed out. “It’s not nothing.”

“No. It’s not. But another man…”

“Well, I’m not that man.”

“You aren’t. Still. Surely there must be something. It cannot be this easy.” She smiled at him suddenly, seeing something that must have fluttered across his expression. “I see you understand exactly.”

“It’s crossed my mind a few times that I should have been more wary from the start. But I’ve had a revelation just now.”

“Oh? About what?”

“You. I watched Brienne deny what was right in front of her, and I realized that sometimes…after everything we’ve been through, sometimes it’s easier to assume the worst. Assume the worst, even when the best possible outcome is staring you in the face. It’s easier to recover when you’ve braced for a blow, and that’s what we’re doing with each other: we’re constantly bracing for a blow that isn’t coming. I’m not asking for a lot, because I don’t need a lot. My people, my family, they have their needs and their wants, and I will fight for them. But for me, for myself, I only need you to be a good queen and to rule the people well. Maybe that is a lot.”

“And what if I’m not?” she asked. Her expression was difficult to read, as she moved away from him, back into the shadowed area of the tent, circling the table again, reminding him of the way her dragons flew in the clouds, wheeling overhead.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“If I turn out to be as mad as my father. All you’re asking for might be an awful lot.”

“You won’t.”

“Humor me.”

“I would try and help you,” he said. “I would try and keep you from hurting anyone.” It was the only thing he could think of to say.

“Even though I would be your queen?” she asked. His frown grew deeper. Where was this coming from?

“Yes,” he said. “If you proved unworthy.”

“Who decides what’s unworthy? Would that be you?”

“I would make my judgements. I would hardly be the only one.”

She nodded again. She seemed…satisfied, of all things.

“I don’t need a man who sits by my side and tells me with his every breath that I am always making the right choices. I need someone who isn’t afraid to tell me when I’ve gone too far, or asked for too much, or threatened too severely. I have spent long hours in wondering how I would be a different ruler. Different from my father. Different from Cersei. I won’t let power make me into a monster. I know my own heart enough to say that. But I’d like to have someone by me who can help me be sure.”

“I would help you gladly. For your sake as much as for the realm.”

That pleased her; he saw the tension leave her, and he understood. To share a burden between two people was infinitely easier than dealing with it alone. 

“When Drogo died,” she said. “I didn’t think I would ever love again. I opened my body to another, but never my heart. You surprised me.”

“I wasn’t expecting you, either, after everything I lost.”

Daenerys smiled. She looked up at him. She bit her lip.

“I’m glad we were both wrong. When I’m with you…I know exactly what kind of queen I want to be. I was always certain, in the beginning. I didn’t have the luxury of doubts. But the more I fought and the more I lost, the more I wondered what I was fighting for. You’ve reminded me. You and your family. You and your people. It’s them. It’s not the throne. It’s not the seat that Cersei Lannister holds, and it’s not the crown she wears. It’s this. You and me. It’s everyone out there, marching together toward an uncertain future for the hope of making a difference.”

“You didn’t need me to remind you,” Robb said.

“But I did,” Daenerys replied. Her smile was even brighter this time, and Robb had trouble looking away. “When you fight for so long for something…sometimes the reasons fade away. Tyrion was asking me, before you and I even met. Why? Why did I want the throne? Why did I want to rule? I thought I had the answers, but something in me was telling me that I was wrong. Now I understand better, and you deserve to be thanked for that.”

“I’m glad,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. So much of it seemed impossible. So much of her. The man who wished he had died with his wife and mother never could have conceived of Daenerys.

Chapter Text

Your brother spends most of his time cloistered away in the dragon queen’s tent while I freeze in a camp with my men, surrounded by guards who pretend not to understand me and who appear to have forgotten how to smile. My brother wishes for me to share his pavilion, but he only offers so that he can be sure I don’t try to make my escape back to Kings Landing. I have told him that I have no desire to leave. He doesn’t believe me. Lady Brienne supports my sharing quarters with my men, but that’s only because she thinks it will be easier for me to escape. I hope that you, at least, can be persuaded to spare a bed, a few blankets, and perhaps a little trust for an old, miserable friend. Even if you must stick me in Winterfell’s cells.

Sansa sighed and tucked Jaime’s letter from the previous day beneath the one that had just arrived from Robb. She had assumed from the dryness of Jaime’s correspondence that the comment about Robb had been mostly in jest. Apparently not.

Robb’s letter was not nearly so colorful as Jaime’s, but that was no surprise. Robb had always hated writing. He stated the facts baldly, with none of his personality. It always made Sansa miss him more whenever she received word from him. His letter this time confirmed that he and Daenerys were going to be married in the godswood at Winterfell, on the dragon queen’s request. He was as reassuring as his awkwardness with written word would allow him to be, making allusions to negotiations that had apparently gone well. Sansa found that she trusted him better than she had, and though she still would need more details when he returned, she did not feel the same panic at the thought. She had grown more certain of her place in Winterfell since he left on the back of the dragon. Part of that was Jon’s openness, part of it was Bran’s reassurance, and part of it was Arya’s continued lessons in how to use a blade. But most of it was just her, her deepening understanding of what it meant to rule and her growing confidence that she actually could. When Robb was married to the dragon queen, Winterfell would pass to her. She could not let them down.

Cloistered away, she thought. Jaime’s words made her frown. She thought of what Jaime’s sister had said once, about women and the weapon they carried between their legs. It had never rung true for Sansa before, but she didn’t like the way those words made her feel. Cloistered away. Her brother had already failed their family once for love. Love. Perhaps it wasn’t love at all. She wanted to believe that Robb was better than that, but Robb was a man, and perhaps Cersei was right about some things.

No, she thought. Cersei’s words said more about her than they did about Robb. You have trusted him this far. Just…trust him a little further. He can want her and still make the right choices.

“What is it?” Jon asked. He was standing in the doorway, brow furrowed. He was carrying his own correspondence, though it was crumpled and wet. She had seen him earlier, playing in the snow with Ghost and Sam and little Sam. He was still flushed with laughter and exertion, and she felt oddly guilty, like her wavering mood would ruin his otherwise enjoyable morning. But he would not thank her for pushing him away. He would be especially annoyed if he realized it was because she wanted to take on the burden herself. He did enough of that, but he could not stand to have it done to him in turn.

“My letter from Robb,” she said. She held it out to him, and he came and sat across the desk from her, in the place he spent so much time of late. Ever since she had cried on him about Robb’s betrayals, he had been more open with his care for her. She liked it, even as much as it made her feel terrible to want the things she still longed for from him. She liked that he was so careful with her. She liked that he smiled more with her. They were both so busy with the running of Winterfell and with spending time separately with their other family members, and he was constantly working with the Free Folk and writing to the Wall and helping Sam with his research, or whatever it was they were doing when they had their quiet conversations. But he had time for her, too, and it was finally doing away with some of the residual anxiety she’d been unable to squash from back when she was wondering what would become of her and Jon once the others were back and he no longer only had her to tie him to his family.

“What does it say?” he asked her. That was something he was doing a lot of, too. Showing that he trusted her by asking for her take on things.

“Robb and Daenerys will be married in the godswood,” she said.

“Oh,” Jon answered. He was frowning at her. Trying to figure out how she felt about it without asking her.

“At least it’s a helpful marriage this time,” she said.

“Right,” Jon allowed with a smile. “I know you don’t feel the same, but I like the idea.”

“Of marriage?”

“Of Robb and Daenerys Targaryen. They’re a good alliance. They’re a good match. They care for each other. That’s better than a good alliance.”

Sansa scoffed and pulled out a sheet of parchment to answer Robb’s letter with one of her own. She had thought to let it sit overnight so that she would be better able to marshal her feelings before responding, but Jon being near always had that effect anyway, and she would rather have it done soon. Jaime’s letters were always more difficult to answer, because she felt the pressure to be sympathetic as well as witty, now that they had grown more friendly, but she had a better idea now of how to talk to Robb.

“There’s nothing better than a good alliance,” she said, distracted. Jon laughed, then. Quiet.

“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” he said in answer to her questioning look.

“Well, it’s true.” She shrugged and shuffled through her letters one more time to remind herself what she should be writing to her brother. There was a very short update from Brienne that said nothing about Robb, nor Daenerys, nor Jaime. It was all troop movements and time estimates. Oh, Brienne. “I used to think differently, but…good alliances are important. They keep us alive. They keep us protected. It’s hard to go to war against a family when your daughter’s married to their heir.”

“Aye, I suppose, but…that’s not the same as love,” Jon argued softly.

“No. Love changes. Fades. It happens all the time.”

Jon sighed.

“I wish…” he started.

“Don’t start with the guilt,” Sansa chuckled.

“Guilt?”

“You were going to say that you wish I could have had better experiences in love, and maybe I’d understand better.”

“Well, is that so bad a thing to say?”

“No. It’s just pointless. Alliances are what’s important. If Daenerys was just some woman, just…”

“Like Talisa?” Jon asked, his eyebrows arched. Sansa was conscious of a vague disappointment coming from him, and she was flushed. Embarrassed by it.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “Robb loved Talisa. I would have liked to have met her. It would have been a scandal even without the war, but…with the war, it was ruinous of him to choose love instead of what he had already promised to do.”

Jon nodded thoughtfully.

“I can agree to that,” he said.

“If she was just anyone, and he was choosing it again…” Sansa shook her head. She’d already said all of this to Jon. Expressed her terror and her insecurities. She didn’t want to state them again. She didn’t think she needed to, frankly. “That it’s a good alliance takes some of the sting away from it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not wary.”

“Of course,” Jon said. He smiled at her when she looked at him to see his reaction. “I understand, Sansa.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I suppose I’m not. But that’s just…it’s never been a concern for me, has it? I just don’t understand it the way you do. The way you have to. Not like I ever would have been important enough to marry for an alliance before.”

“You are now.” 

“Well. Maybe. Still a man brought back from the dead, though. And I’ve been told I’m too serious. That can’t exactly be appealing.” He was teasing her, expecting a smile. She felt her throat clog up with all the words she refused to say.

“You never know,” she said instead. She hated that her instinct was to dart her eyes away, so she forced herself to keep them on him. “You seem set against it.”

“What, marriage?”

“For an alliance.”

“Oh. I don’t know. I suppose I would, if you needed me to.”

Surprised by that, Sansa felt her brow furrow. Of course it wasn’t what he meant, but it was what she heard, in that sparkling, silver moment. Gods. I would if you needed me to.

It would be so sweet, to be married to Jon. To be married even to someone like Jon, but there was no one else like him. He was her friend, above all else, and she already loved him. What would that be like? To be married to someone she wanted to see every day, wanted to spend time with, wanted to talk to. Every night when they parted ways, she wished that they didn’t have to. If they were married…

She could tell herself all she wanted that she wasn’t that same stupid little girl that she used to be, but then she went and did things like this. Thought things like this.

“I meant for you,” she said quickly. “For yourself. Would you ever choose it? It’s not about what I might need.”

Jon frowned at her. Had she spoken too quickly? Was it too obvious that she had been struck by something?

“If you’re saying if I’d rather choose an alliance or love, then it’s love, I suppose. But I understand what you’re saying.”

“You’re blushing,” she noticed suddenly. She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re still a romantic, aren’t you?”

He grumbled. He blushed deeper. He glared at her. She couldn’t help but laugh at him. Sweet, she thought, unbidden. He’s sweet. It’s sweet.

“You make that sound so ridiculous,” he said.

“It should be. You were murdered. You saw the worst of people.”

“Aye, but I didn’t only see the worst,” he argued. He was so earnest like this. It should have made her annoyed, or angry. She should have hated him for trying to convince her that there was no reason to close off her heart, because he just didn’t understand. She felt softer, instead. “It’s not all hopeless. There’s got to be something we’re…you know. Fighting for. Otherwise it just doesn’t mean anything.” She was still smiling at him, and he sighed. Put-upon, rolling his eyes. “What about you, then?” he asked. “You’re so sure. Are you saying you wouldn’t?”

“Marry for love?” she asked. He nodded. He looked sad. Tense and confused and sad, most of all. He thought she deserved someone good. He thought she deserved to feel loved. If only he knew she was thinking about kissing him beneath the heart tree. Snowflakes falling around them. She didn’t know if she would even be able to get married in a godswood again, after the last time, but she would, if he required it. He would protect her from her demons, wouldn’t he? Or he’d do his best to try, anyway. Perhaps that would be enough. “I don’t think that’s possible,” she said diplomatically. In her mind, he was smiling at her. His eyes were crinkling at the corners. He was reaching up his burned hand to brush the snow from her red hair.

“If it was possible,” he prodded.

“If it was possible, of course I would,” she replied. She was rolling and unrolling Jaime Lannister’s scroll in her hands. Some people had love right in front of them and were too stupid to see it. Some people loved the wrong people and suffered for it.

“And why are you so sure it isn’t?” Jon asked. His voice was always soft when he spoke to her, but it seemed especially soft, then. It made a lump form in Sansa’s throat. In her mind, he was holding her hand as they walked back into the hall together. The northerners cheered. Even Robb and Arya were happy. Bran was himself again. A foolish little girl’s dreams. Nothing more.

“I realized a long time ago that no one would ever marry me for love,” she answered. She had meant to sound steady and amused. Instead, she thought she sounded shaken. Perhaps it was still buried inside her, the wish that love would come to her. She’d thought that it had been bled out of her. Even if it caused her pain, she was glad to find that it wasn’t. She was glad that her last husband hadn’t taken that from her, too.

“Why not?” Jon asked. He sounded affronted.

“Because I’m the sister of a king. And before that, I was the daughter of a great lord. The first daughter. I’ve always been an alliance to be made. What I want, who I love, it doesn’t matter.”

“You aren’t just an alliance,” Jon insisted. He was looking at her…no. She was just seeing the things she wanted to see, just like she did when she was a child. She was supposed to know better now. Just because she was broken and wrong, it didn’t mean Jon was the same. He was a good person. He was a good cousin. A good brother, too. He wanted her to feel better, and he was saying those words and speaking so earnestly because he was trying.

The truth was that Sansa wasn’t sure she was built for love anymore. She had been once. She had loved with her whole heart, then. Joffrey had been unworthy of it, true, but it wasn’t even always about Joffrey. Not nearly so much as it was about love. When she was a girl, the love parts were always her favorite parts of stories. She craved the ones about knights and their heroism, but only if there was some swooning lady who watched over him and gave him her favor. To love someone fully, wholly, like Queen Naerys had loved her Dragonknight. Sansa wanted to be just like a maid in a song. Joffrey, she had been sure, would love her, and she would love him in return. That was what happened in the stories, and what was life if not a beautiful tale? She had been raised to be good, and proper, and everyone told her that she was beautiful. Of course the prince would fall in love with her! They would be married and have babies, and she would be a good and fair queen.

All of that had been dashed out of her. Not slowly, but with a sudden force. Wrested from her. Maybe it started before Joffrey cut off her father’s head, but she had continued to fool herself until that happened. He didn’t mean it, she thought, every time she saw some cruelty in him. He’s under a lot of pressure. He has a lot of responsibility. That’s all it is.

Of course it wasn’t. She was just too stupid to see it until her eyes had been forced open. And then they stayed open. Not just for Joffrey, but for everyone. How was she supposed to believe in love after that? How was she supposed to risk it?

That was why it was so easy to find herself dreaming of marrying Jon. Loving him properly, like all those songs and stories she no longer believed in. Jon never expected anything from her. He never tricked her or betrayed her. He loved her as a brother, and she was safe to love him in a way that she knew was shameful, because he would never guess, and he would never love her back in the way she craved. It was fake. It wasn’t real, and that was safer.

But he was looking at her, still.

“That’s not all you are,” he continued. She couldn’t look away from his eyes. They were so large and so concerned and so kind. She hated and craved it at once. He didn’t make it easy to stop loving him in a way that was improper. He was just always there, being handsome and true and wonderful. She often wished she had been kinder to him when they were children. He no longer seemed so surprised by her kindnesses, but she knew her old self lingered sometimes when she grew short or snappish with him. And maybe, if they had been closer when they were young, it wouldn’t have been so easy to start thinking of him as cousin and not brother.  “You’re so much more than that,” he continued. She could hardly even remember what she’d said to prompt that. She hesitated, her mouth halfway to open. There was something in his expression that…

He stood, suddenly. He nearly knocked the letter out of her hands. She hadn’t realized he had leaned so close, over the desk, the better to peer at her gently.

“Jon, I,” she said. Had he seen something? Did he know?

“I should go,” he said simply. He gave her another short look, but he would not meet her eyes, and he left.

Chapter Text

“Brienne,” the voice called. A whisper that echoed through the trees. She strained toward it. She was running through the snow. It was deep around her calves, and then her thighs. She couldn’t move quickly enough. Lady Sansa had been just ahead of her. Brienne was sure of it, though she could not remember when, or why. Robb had been with her. Holding her in his arms. They had been surrounded by tall, white, dead things. The snow was obscuring them now. She couldn’t find them. She couldn’t move fast enough to catch them. She could only hear the wind. Could only see grey sentinel trees, watching her. Whispering.

They need you.

They need you, and you’re too slow. You’re not enough.

You’ll never be enough.

“Brienne.” 

The voice again, and Brienne was being pulled away. The trees faded, but the eyes that hid between them remained. Ice blue and cold. They could see her. She jolted further, pulled by the voice and by her own fear. She swirled into darkness, and then she rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. Firelight from a cookfire outside danced on the roof of the tent, casting red shadows that banished the memory of black and blue.

She was safe. She was in her tent. She was buried beneath her blankets and furs, though her breath fogged the air above her when she sighed. Podrick snored beside her, a comforting presence at her back, and two of the Dragon Queen’s men breathed quietly beyond him. She’d had her own tent at the beginning of the march. Her own cot, too, and blankets. As they marched further north, she had shared her tent with women. Dothraki women had no issues bedding down among Dothraki men, among their family units, but there were other women who marched with the army and who wanted spaces of their own. Camp followers and nurses, some, but mostly they had been women from across the sea, the women who followed Daenerys, who were unused to cold weather. They had flocked to Brienne, to her protection and to the warmth she offered with her tent and her company. Brienne had enjoyed that immensely. She had been wary of women when she was young, because her father’s paramours and her own wretched septa had been so terrible to her. But she found a peace in being among kind women who cared for her. The camp followers appreciated her because she made no demands of them and because she thanked them kindly for every courtesy. They called her gallant and knightly and all sorts of wonderful things.

Jaime and Tyrion and even Robb had laughed themselves hoarse when she’d failed to understand that several of her tentmates were trying to get her to make demands of them, but once she finally did understand, the women had taken her gentle rejections kindly enough. Much kinder than any man would have, Brienne was sure. Now that they were gone, she missed them terribly.

Most of them had remained at Riverrun, with Olenna Tyrell and the wounded from Highgarden. Edmure Tully and the Blackfish had welcomed them warmly and had given them all places in the household, along with beds and blankets and food and clothing that was more suited to the weather than what little they had brought for themselves. The armies had spent a few days recovering there. Even Jaime, who had fretted, arguing he should stay in the encampment rather than face the family he had stood against, was given a place of respect in the castle. That was owed to his forethought in sending a host of Lannister men ahead to help take it back, and perhaps because Daenerys had had word spread that he was a particular ally, and should be treated well. Both Tully men avoided him, but that was probably for the best. Jaime was defensive at the best of times, and he would not like to be glared at by Edmure or chastised by Brynden. Any conversation between them would surely end in a diplomatic incident.

Perhaps it was foolish and short-sighted of her, but Brienne had several times become defensive on his behalf. The Blackfish was a good, honorable man, and she valued his friendship, but he learned early in their stay that Brienne could have a sharp tongue when it came to Jaime Lannister. She was only glad that he had kept his thoughts on that to himself, and that word had not spread to Jaime himself.

When they left Riverrun, Brynden and his army joined the march north with a good amount of the remaining Tully forces, and they had all been outfitted with new or repaired tents, blankets and furs, and as many cloaks as Edmure could spare. But it was getting colder every day as they got closer to Winterfell, and the Unsullied and the Dothraki and most of the dragon queen’s people were suffering from it. Brienne had been more than happy to give up her pavilion to a company of Dothraki, and happy to share a much smaller field tent with Podrick and two of Grey Worm’s lieutenants. She had sparred with them before, and she trusted them. And she had never minded sleeping on the ground, anyway. She found that it made the men respect her more, for her to be so visibly among them.

“Brienne?”

It was real, the voice. It wasn’t from her dream at all. She sat up fully, and the skin on her arms went pimpled from the cold. It had gotten even colder since they had bedded down. It was freezing. Seven hells, what was he doing out there?

She crawled to the entrance and pushed open the flap to the tent. It was a simple field tent, smaller than the one she was used to. Its small size better kept the heat from the four bodies within. Still, it was frigid outside the blankets, and the air that gusted in from outside when she pulled aside the flap was even colder. If the temperatures continued to drop too much, they might lose some people from it.

Jaime was crouched outside her tent in a Tully-blue cloak with white fur around the collar. Tyrion must have gotten it for him somewhere, because the fur was rare enough, and of fine quality. He looked distractingly good in it. Brienne could understand why he would not want to draw attention to himself by wearing it while they rode.

Sansa’s letters indicated that they would be able to provide more furs and warmer clothing for the armies when they arrived, but after years of warfare, there was a scarcity of goods everywhere they turned. The food from the Reach had been a boon, but it wouldn’t last forever. The Greyjoy ships provided fish and salted meat and fat for tallow, but furs remained elusive, and Jaime’s continued place of respect required a more humble façade. That was something Jaime understood, even if Tyrion kept trying to gild his brother in their house colors.

Blue, Brienne noticed idly, is not one of his house’s colors, and she had to banish the foolish thought of how well he looked in a color that was one of hers.

Jaime’s boots were new, too, and Brienne was glad. She had noticed that his old pair was wearing down. They had taken to resting the horses and walking for long stretches, though she worried about how it sapped his energy. He hated for her to mention it, so she rarely did, but she worried regardless. 

Jaime still had not abandoned them. His chance for that had long passed. She still could not believe his words to her, or the way he looked at her, or the way everyone said he looked at her, but she could believe now that he would travel with them to Winterfell. He was a man of honor. It warmed her heart somewhere that had grown cold after Highgarden. Jaime was a man of honor, and he was going to do the honorable thing; Cersei would not help them fight against the dead, but Jaime would. It was to be the greatest battle the world had seen in centuries. Of course he would fight.

When she opened her tent, he smiled at her, and her stomach swooped the way it always did when she saw the flash of his teeth. She never seemed to get used to his handsomeness. She had grown accustomed to Lady Sansa’s beauty, and the fine features of King Robb and Jon Snow. But Jaime…somehow, his looks always took her by surprise. He looked especially good like this: comfortable and soft, swathed in warmth, though he shivered. There was new snow outside, and it was falling heavily, into his hair and beard. He had filled out on the road, after those hollow weeks of recovering from the wound she had given him. They had sparred often to keep his strength, and she had noticed on occasion with approval that it had done him some good. He looked more like she remembered him from the last time she saw him at Riverrun. He had looked well, then. He looked well now.

“What are you doing out there?” she hissed at him.

“Tyrion’s tent is too big. It’s freezing in there. I tried to take some of his furs, but he told me off. Can I sleep in here?”

He smiled at her helplessly. Surely he had to know what effect that had on her. She was already blushing, but the heat of his look only made it worse. She could feel the red creeping up her face, banishing the cold from the winter wind.

They already call you Kingslayer’s Whore, she reminded herself. And there were three other men in her tent besides. Any ideas of propriety had abandoned her somewhere after they left Riverrun. Warmth was warmth, and they took it where they could get it.

“Fine,” she said. “Come in. Hurry.”

He breathed out some thanks that were too sincere for her to listen to without reddening further, and she crawled back under the blankets. She was still wearing her clothing, but she felt oddly bare. Podrick shifted on her other side, but he blessedly did not wake, just murmuring something insensible before settling back down. He slept like the dead, especially as it got colder and he buried himself deeper in their blankets.

Jaime had brought some of his own blankets with him, bundled beneath his cloak. It was easy to imagine that he had planned on showing them if she had seemed likely to send him away. That struck something in her. Some tenderness for him that surprised her with its force. He thought you would turn him away.

He still hasn’t left. He doesn’t seem likely to. What would be the point of leaving now? You can trust this, can’t you? Even if you can’t trust the rest.

The rest. Jaime’s quiet, drugged confession. His later refusal to take the words back. His later quiet insistence that they had been true.

Brienne was not a stranger to the mockery of men. In Renly’s camp, there had even been a bet to see who could win her over, take her maidenhead. They had been too kind, too flattering, too obvious, and yet she had not noticed for so long. When Jaime smiled too kindly and told her that he loved her, of course she assumed…

But men did not enact those cruelties for no reason. Not in her experience. They enacted those cruelties for other men. To make them laugh or to feel more powerful. The only man in camp Jaime spoke to regularly was Tyrion. He slept apart from his men now that most of them had integrated with the other armies. The Lannister men still looked to him for guidance, but he was stern and officious with them. There were no ribald jokes or bets or cruelties. And it was Jaime, besides. That would not be honorable, and she did believe him to be honorable.

No, it was not cruelty that she feared from Jaime. It was inconstancy. He loved Cersei. He had always loved Cersei. Perhaps it was easy to fool himself into thinking he didn’t love her anymore. Perhaps he didn’t want to love her anymore. It would be convenient to love Brienne instead. It would be more like the honorable man that Jaime craved to be. Perhaps he even did love her, in a way, but he could not love her more than he loved Cersei. It wasn’t possible. If Brienne gave in now, if she told him that she felt the same…he would hurt her, in the end. She was sure of it. He would go back to Cersei, because Cersei was his other half, and Brienne was not, no matter how badly she wished she was.

Jaime shed his cloak, and he fumbled in the darkness. She was only briefly alarmed when he slipped beneath the blankets beside her, close enough that she could smell the woodsmoke that clung to his hair and beard. What had she expected? That he would sleep on the other side with the Unsullied? Of course he would choose to bed down beside her. And it was not so new, anyway. They had done it often enough on the road from Harrenhal.

She set to spreading out his pile of blankets over them, to give herself something to do. She slipped one over Podrick, which Jaime didn’t complain about, to her surprise. She could feel the cold coming off him, chilled air filling the space between them. Her fingers twitched, wanting to touch him. Warm him up. She didn’t move. He’s going to move closer. She knew it before he did it.

He found an excuse to come here. She knew that, too.

She considered facing away from him and closing her eyes. Going back to sleep. Jaime was shifting under the blankets beside her. She hesitated. She turned towards him instead, her head resting on her pack. He was very close. He turned on his side to face her, too, and he smiled. There was so little light in the tent. Just what shone through the canvas from the fires outside. Her every instinct was to back away, but she didn’t.

“You’re freezing,” she whispered, and he smiled more brightly and shifted closer. This is too dangerous. She knew that, too. To be this close to him. To sleep like this, with him beside her. If he touched her…

“I told you. Tyrion’s easier to keep warm with a few blankets. I’m a bit bigger. And you’re the biggest person in this camp, so I thought if anyone would know how to keep warm...”

She couldn’t help but smile at that. She ducked her head to hide it.

“I’m not,” she pointed out. “There are plenty of Dothraki here that are bigger than me.”

“You’re not,” Jaime agreed. His voice was more serious than it had been. She met his eyes and saw that he was smiling softly at her. “So what does that tell you?”

“That you’re a liar who wanted in my bed,” she managed to say, which made him laugh quietly at her.

He was so difficult to disbelieve sometimes. If she were another woman, perhaps she would believe him. Perhaps she would fall for his kind smiles the same way she had fallen for Renly’s. Renly had done a young girl a kindness that cost him nothing, and it earned him a devoted follower for the rest of his life. Jaime had treated her as an equal, and he had given her a priceless sword and a true quest, and she had not grown up so much since Renly that she was immune to that. But she knew better, because she knew Jaime better than she had ever known Renly. She knew what he wanted, and she knew what he would choose, and she knew that it wasn’t her. Not Brienne. She wasn’t made to be loved. She was made to love fruitlessly and from afar.

She loved Jaime from up close, too. She had worried about that, once. Worried that it would be easier to love him from far away, because it would be easy to forget the things about him that infuriated her when they were apart. But weeks in his company had not done away with her love, even as he had annoyed her and tortured her and tricked himself into believing himself in love with her. She loved him still. She loved him when he was desperate for her sword on the battlefield, and she loved him now that she saw that misery and tension and darkness falling away from him the further they got from Kings Landing. He had been reborn a different man after the battle, and every day he was more whole than he had been the day before, and she loved him for it.

Even as she rejected his words as an impossible dream. Even when she was avoiding him, and furious with him, she was still so happy he was alive, and she still loved him. She didn’t know what to do with that love, but it was there within her. She no longer remembered what it was to live without it.

“Why did you say…” she started. She stopped herself before she could continue, but he understood.

“Because it’s true,” he replied. Their voices were low, whispered, but his words seemed louder somehow. It can’t be true, she thought. 

“But,” she said. There were so many things. Look at me. What about your sister? You aren’t thinking straight. You’re just convinced it’s what you should feel. It isn’t real. It isn’t true. “You know I don’t need. I still. It isn’t.” She sighed, and he laughed at her. Quiet exhales that he hid beneath his blanket.

“If you say a full sentence, I’ll respond to it,” he said.

“I don’t need you to…to love me,” she managed. “If that’s what it’s about.”

“It isn’t,” he said simply. His brow was furrowed. He was looking at her, and so she took the opportunity to look back at him. She had hardly been granted the opportunity lately, without having to worry that he would catch her. She remembered watching him when he was at his sickest, when the Mummers had them. He had been dirty and ragged, then. Still beautiful, but in a way that didn’t touch her. She had feared for him. She had feared that he would stop breathing in the night, and so she had watched him as he slept beside her. His labored breathing had kept her awake.

His breathing wasn’t labored now. It was steady, sure. He was steady and sure, and she was the one unbalanced. She reached for him in the dark. She hardly understood what she was doing. It felt like they were apart from reality. Perhaps it was only the lingering loneliness of her dream that made her do it. Forget the rules for long enough. She pressed her fingertips against his jaw. His beard was rough against them, and she could hear the scratch of it louder than she would have expected in the otherwise quiet tent. One of the Unsullied rolled over in his sleep. Podrick made some murmuring sound. Men were laughing and talking at a campfire some distance away. There was wind, too. Yet Jaime’s eyes didn’t leave hers, and no other sound mattered. Someone could sound an alarm outside and it would have taken her some time to respond.

When she fought Jaime on the battlefield, smoke stinging her eyes and tears of panic flooding them, he said a thousand words with a single expression, and she understood every one of them. He wants to die. He wants me to kill him. At the time, she thought…she wasn’t sure. Perhaps she hadn’t been thinking anything at all. But later, afterward, she thought it was because of Cersei. He had been afraid to fail his sister. His queen. Afraid to disappoint her. He had known he could not win, and so of course he did not want to return to her alive, broken and humiliated and a failure. Of course he wanted to die trying for her, because from what Brienne knew of Cersei, that would have likely pleased the queen.

He had been torn, though. She knew that now as she hadn’t then. He had been torn in two: the man who loved his sister and the man who wanted to do good. He didn’t seem torn now. Her palm touched his jaw, her hand pressing against the length of it, her thumb brushing over his skin, and Jaime closed his eyes. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He didn’t move away; he didn’t move towards her, either. He breathed out. Slow and slightly shaky. His chin dipped closer to his chest, and his next breath was almost shuddering. He did move closer, then, and he turned his head slightly, far enough that he could kiss her palm. It tingled where his lips had pressed, and she stared at him in astonishment.

“Jaime,” she whispered.

“Brienne,” he replied. He reached up and held her hand in place against his jaw, so that she would not snatch it away. He took it, and he brought her hand and his down between them, so that their two hands together were pressed against both of their chests. He was too close. She didn’t know how to be this close to him anymore. Not without the excuse of his illness or the way the Mummers had tied them together on that horse.

“I can’t…” she said, and he nodded.

“I know,” he said. His eyes were still on her.

I know you don’t trust me, they told her. They were nearly wretched. Nearly miserable in a way they shouldn’t have been, because she did trust him. It wasn’t fair for him to look at her like that. It wasn’t fair for him to think…

I know you don’t trust me, his eyes said. But please don’t send me away. She squeezed his fingers. One of the men on guard outside laughed loudly. A gust of wind shook the flap of the tent. The space between she and Jaime was smaller and warmer than it had been. Her eyes were more adjusted to the dark, and she could see his face better. How hopeful and at once hopeless he looked.

She wanted to ask him why. She wanted to ask him when. She wanted to know every single detail about what he was claiming to feel for her, as if it would prove something to her. As if enough words would make her understand, or perhaps allow her to see that she was right, after all, and that his love was as impossible as she was sure it was.

And yet the thought of having the words spoken aloud was almost excruciating. How was she supposed to listen to it? She couldn’t. It would be too much. Even if he didn’t sound like he was lying. Even if she believed him. It would be…

“Cersei,” she started instead. She swallowed. “She said. She told me that I was in love with you.”

She couldn’t help but to mention his sister, it seemed. She could not banish the queen’s perfect golden hair or her perfect golden face. To forget Cersei was to forget the true danger: Jaime might have some fondness for Brienne, and he was choosing to follow her now. But his heart would always be Cersei’s.

“When?” he asked. He propped himself up on his elbow, his maimed arm stretching towards her, and she allowed her hand to reach out and touch it, fingertips sliding over the scarred skin. She had wanted to, every time she saw it on the road. To remind him, maybe, of how easy things had been between them when they were fighting for their lives and his wound was slowly killing him. Or to reassure him, maybe. She hardly knew. She just wanted to, and so with a newfound boldness in this liminal moment, she did. He watched her hand, and she thought he might pull his stump away, hide it again beneath the furs, but he didn’t. He breathed in another shuddering breath.

“The wedding,” she said. She worried that he might go blank at the mention of his son’s death, but Jaime only laughed. She shushed him, but only one of the Unsullied fighters stirred, and then settled again. Jaime ducked his head, still laughing, though quieter now. He leaned in. His forehead pressed against her shoulder, and she felt the shock of it as if he had burned her. He was so casual, so unthinking with his touches. And they meant everything. How could he not…

“So long,” he said. She was blushing. She wanted to get up and leave him there. Panic was filling her. Mocking. He was mocking her. He… “Of course she guessed it in you but not in me. She never understood me at all, did she? She never would have thought…” He laughed again. This time, it was bitter. Quieter, too, so she didn’t shush him. He raised his head to look at her. He brushed her hair away from her face, and her skin felt charged along the path his fingers took. “I can’t believe she saw it before I did.”

He wasn’t mocking her at all. He was mocking himself. He was mocking Cersei. She breathed more easily again. She tried to smile. It felt crooked and wrong on her face. Jaime bit his bottom lip, and Brienne wondered.

What would he do if she kissed him?

Her hand still played over his scars on his wrist, but she didn’t look away from his eyes.

“You still don’t believe me,” he said. And that was true, too.

“I believe…something,” she managed. “I believe you think you…care for me.”

Jaime huffed out a defeated sound, and she thought that he would pull his hand away, roll away from her, but he didn’t. He rested his head at last on the pack. His maimed arm stayed between them, and she did not take her hand from it. His smile was less bitter than she expected it to be, but it was still in some ways pained, and still in some ways painful to look at.

“You’ll see,” he said. “I’ll prove it to you. Gods willing, before I die in this war. If not, perhaps it will be easier to trust a corpse.”

“Jaime,” she admonished, and he leaned in. She thought he would kiss her. She nearly held her breath. The shadow of his face blocked out the light from the fires beyond the tent. She saw only impressions of him. A glint of his eyes. Strands of his hair as it fell over his forehead. His breath was on her cheek, and his lips followed it, pressed to her cheekbone. She breathed in sharply. She clutched his arm tighter. Her entire body warmed at the contact.

Jaime dropped his head back down on his pack.

“Sleep, Brienne,” he said. She nodded. She tried to get comfortable. Jaime’s eyes closed slowly. He was still smiling.  

Chapter Text

When the army, with Robb and Daenerys at its head, arrived at last in Winterfell, Arya was standing behind Bran’s chair. She found that she took up less space that way. Peoples’ eyes darted right past her, like she was the sweet, helpful sister pushing around her brother. Even people who knew her better made the same mistakes when she tried hard enough to look invisible. And when they weren’t watching, she was able to watch them.

Sansa stood rigid and ready to receive their guests. Her small smile was fixed on her face, but Arya knew it for what it was. She knew Sansa was worried. She would have known it even if Sansa hadn’t voiced it, but Sansa had. She had been slow to allow any of the burden to fall on any of her siblings. She preferred to handle every worry on her own. But Arya had persisted in asking, and once Sansa started speaking—at first just to shut Arya up—she seemed unable to stop.

Sansa worried about the lack of food. She worried about the lack of beds. The lack of horses. The lack of furs and firewood. She worried about how far the hunters were having to range out for meat. She worried that the approaching armies would eat through the stores that were supposed to last the north for the entire winter.

She worried about Robb. She worried that this proposed marriage alliance would lead to their ruin. She worried that her hesitation would lead her to be cold. She worried about what impression she would be giving to her people, and she worried about what her people might want to see from her. Whether they would want her to support this alliance or stand against it. She worried about Jon, but that was nothing new. She worried about the Night King, too, though not in the same way that Arya and Jon did. Actually, he was a bit hilariously low on the list of things she was concerned with.

“I can’t do anything about that,” she had said when Arya teased her for it. “Whatever happens with him will happen. It won’t be up to me. But I’m responsible for everything else around here.”

She’d said it in such a put-upon tone that Arya had to laugh. It had been the first time that Sansa had smiled in days.

Her smile now was much faker than that one had been. She was watching the dragons spin around in the air before settling down in the snowy plain where they had spent most of their time the first time they were here.

“What do they even eat?” she had asked Arya one night, in a panicked whisper. “We barely have enough meat to feed our people!”

Arya could see those thoughts clouding Sansa’s mind as the gates opened. Robb and Daenerys looked quite majestic at the head of the representatives of the army that had been chosen to enter Winterfell’s halls. They were both smiling, formal. Awkward. It was so strange to see Robb like that. Robb was meant for laughing and jesting with his siblings, not kingliness. He looked like a fool for trying. Arya made a face at him, which of course he saw. He ducked his face into his furs to hide his grin, but he couldn’t hide the small shake of his head or the way his eyes crinkled.

Jon stood on Sansa’s other side, and Arya supposed that all together they probably made a pretty picture. The Starks all united, waiting to greet this new ruler. This queen they were all supposed to support. This queen who wanted to take their brother away and make him her king or her consort or however all this stuff worked. Arya didn’t know. She just knew that Robb wouldn’t be living at Winterfell anymore. Arya had liked Daenerys fine, with her dragons and her smiles and her pretty face. But that didn’t mean she wanted Daenerys to have Robb. Arya wasn’t a child like she had been, but there was an impulse to keep her brothers close that reminded her of when she was.

“It was stupid,” Sansa had said wistfully one night. “To think that we would all stay together for very long.” But Arya didn’t think it was stupid at all. She thought it was nice. She’d waited for so long to get home. To be together. Her mother and father and Rickon were all dead, and most of the people who’d helped raised her were gone. Old Nan and Jory and Rodrick. They were gone and dead, and home would never be really the same without them. But it was still home, and she didn’t want Robb to leave it too, no matter how much he liked his dragon queen.

And he seemed to like her quite a bit. He helped her down from her horse with a smile. There was another man with her, this tall, unsmiling man with a craggy northern face who tried to help her down, too. Reached his hand out and then snatched it away when he realized that Robb had gotten there first. He didn’t glare or act offended or anything, but Arya could see it, and she knew. She barely had to look at them to see that he was obviously in love with the dragon queen. Old and craggy as he was, he wore his longing plain. He’d have to be mad to move against Robb, but it was still good to notice these things, just in case. Some people were mad.

Robb tucked the dragon queen’s arm through his. They walked up to Sansa for introductions as if they hadn’t been here just a few weeks ago. Arya ignored the greetings and the formal shite she hated. She saw Brienne riding in next, with that boy squire just behind her. She was already watching Sansa and Robb and Daenerys with obvious concern. Good. Arya was glad she was back. She and Jon already worried over Sansa enough, but it was good to have someone else who would be almost always by her side. 

Brienne met her eyes, then, and smiled just slightly. Arya tipped her head in acknowledgement in return.

Just behind Brienne was Jaime Lannister. He looked much older than he had the last time Arya saw him. Much older, and much grayer, too. One handed. Not nearly as knightly. She thought he looked like a man from one of Old Nan’s stories the first time, when he rode into Winterfell and took off his helmet, shaking out his pretty blonde hair. She’d always hated all the sappy romantic bits of the stories, but she remembered thinking that he’d make a decent enough hero from one of them. Sansa would have swooned at the sight of him if he was some ancient knight sworn to protect some lady in one of those songs where everybody died and Sansa wiped her eyes prettily at how tragic it was, as if that wasn’t a boring way to end a story. It was only the fact that he was the Kingslayer that kept Sansa from swooning last time, Arya was sure. Sansa only swooned over gallant men.

Well. Men she thought were gallant, anyway. She’d been a bit of an idiot about Joffrey, but that was over, and Arya had done plenty of stupid stuff as a girl, too.

Lannister was all bundled up in a blue cloak, his shoulders around his ears. He was complaining to his little brother, who rode in just beside him. Tyrion was amused and shaking his head at whatever Jaime was saying. Arya wanted to scream at them both to get out of her castle, but that was the old Arya. The new Arya knew that grudges couldn’t last forever if you wanted to move forward. If they were going to have any future at all, they needed all the help they could get. The Lannisters came with quite a lot of soldiers, and they would be a good alliance. It was their sister Arya wanted. If they tried to stop her, there might be a problem, but she would play along until then.

Besides. Sansa had made her promise to be nice, and Sansa asked for so little of Arya. Just occasional niceness and a few lessons on how to use a knife to defend herself, and all things considered, those were easy enough. Playing nice with Lannisters made her feel a bit like a traitor, but Sansa had enough to worry about without Arya getting into a fight straightaway.

Suddenly, it was her turn to greet Robb, who ruffled her hair like he used to when she was a girl, even though Arya glared at him for it. Daenerys smiled at her, and Arya said something that she thought was suitably friendly without sounding too stuck-up. Daenerys smiled wider, so it must have been fine. Her tall man shadow lurked nearby. Arya eyed him pointedly, and Robb shook his head.

Fine. If Robb thought he was okay, Arya would be a bit more subtle about watching him.

Sansa was pulling Brienne into a hug that clearly startled the other woman, and Jon was laughing at both of them. Jaime and Tyrion Lannister were smiling as well, waiting for their turn to approach Sansa. Sansa had been worried about this, about seeing her first husband again, but now she seemed calmer, and Arya knew she’d be all right.

She started to slink away to find a better vantage point where she could watch everyone at once. Bran cast her a slightly amused look as she went.

Once she was up on the walk above, she watched Robb and Daenerys speaking quietly on their own by the entrance to the Great Hall. Brienne was lingering, torn between joining them as she ought and waiting for Sansa. Tyrion greeted Sansa warmly, and though Arya couldn’t hear Sansa’s response, she could picture it easily enough. Something suitably polite but cold enough that Tyrion would not feel like he could say anything he wanted. Jon lurked over her shoulder. Tyrion made his excuses quickly.

Then it was Jaime Lannister who stood before Sansa, and Arya couldn’t help but smile as she watched them. Jaime Lannister’s oldness and grayness fell away a bit as he smirked and bent to kiss Sansa’s hand. He said something to her that made her press her lips together and turn her head away. Angry, Arya thought, but she only thought so for a moment. She’s laughing. Or trying not to. Her shoulders shook briefly with it, before she looked back at him. One corner of her mouth twitched upward. Jon had his hand on her arm, but it fell away when he realized that she was all right. Jaime Lannister was talking, and Sansa responding. Sansa spoke to him much more easily than Arya had expected, though she knew that Sansa and Jaime Lannister had been writing each other for months. Sansa’s eyes sparkled, and Arya paced closer along the walk so she could better hear.

“I hope you’re less inclined to dramatics in person,” Sansa was saying. “Because it’s much easier to respond to those in letter form.”

“No, ask my brother. I’m quite dramatic aloud. More so, actually. It’s easier to speak my thoughts than struggle to write them.”

“Well, you’ll have to forgive all the laughter, then,” Sansa said, and Jaime threw back his head and laughed at that, as if she had said something more than just merely amusing. Arya rolled her eyes. She should have known those two would get on.  Suddenly Lannister took a step back, and he drew his sword. Arya’s throat went dry, and she felt a glimmer of instinctive fear, but she didn’t move. She knew what he was doing. Jon stepped up. Brienne stared. Jaime looked at both of them like they were idiots. Tyrion sighed. Jaime knelt, then, sweeping his blue cloak back over one shoulder, and Arya rolled her eyes, and she saw Sansa doing the same, though she also saw the way Sansa’s cheeks were going pink. Oh gods, it was just like in a story. Arya hated it. She didn’t feel slightly breathless at all.

Well. Sansa would be happy. Everyone was watching them. Tyrion had his face buried in one of his hands and was slowly shaking it. Robb was looking rather smug, as if he had already known—which he probably had, knowing Robb. If there was anyone who was willing to indulge Sansa in her silly little fantasies, it had always been Robb. Always playing knights and damsels, always including Sansa in the games and letting her play the princess so she didn’t have to risk getting all dirty. Daenerys was even smiling, though she looked just a bit jealous, like she wouldn’t have minded if a handsome old knight got down and swore to her. Arya tried to catch the craggy one’s eye, but he didn’t notice. Maybe he was already sworn to her. His loss if he didn’t take the opportunity.

Jaime was swearing to Sansa, pledging his life to her. Saying the words and staring up into her eyes and smiling at her. Sansa was saying the words back to him. Brienne had wandered over, and she was looking at Jaime as if he had lost his wits. Tyrion was looking at the sky in mute appeal, like he was asking the gods to strike him down. Arya couldn’t blame him.

“We will protect Ned Stark’s daughters with Ned Stark’s sword,” Jaime said, and Sansa dipped her head and smiled, because it was exactly the kind of thing that would get her going. Arya was only a little bit annoyed after that. Maybe it was just a move to make sure he didn’t get killed by the dragon queen or any of the northmen, but it was a good one, and now Sansa was twice as safe as before.

She headed up to the walls, after that. The plains beyond Winterfell had been bare and snow-covered this morning, but now they were dotted with tents, and the snow had been muddied by all the boots and the horses. There were men digging trenches. Men setting up more tents. Cookfires. Men driving wagons towards Winterfell’s walls. Arya had seen large groups of men before, but nothing like this. This was an army. It felt like the biggest army the world had ever seen, though she doubted that was true. She saw sigils from Dorne and the Highgarden rose. She saw Lannister banners. She saw men from The Vale. There were other symbols she had never even seen before, and she took them in hungrily. She always wanted to learn more.

The dragons had their own spots away from the men, but they seemed so close, what with being so large. She wouldn’t have liked to be camped in the same field as one, she didn’t think. What if it sneezed? Did dragons sneeze?

She climbed higher, up the side of the keep, the way she remembered Bran doing when he was a boy. So high up, she could see how far the army stretched. No wonder Bran used to like it up here. Arya had been frightened of the heights as a girl, though she had pretended not to be. She should tell that to Bran. He might think that was funny. It might make him remember more.

What if she turns on us? Sansa had asked Bran. We’d be defenseless.

She won’t, Bran had replied, and Sansa had breathed out. Relieved.

Arya wasn’t so sure she believed him. Bran was always saying he wasn’t some kind of oracle. He said he couldn’t tell the future, and he said he couldn’t read minds, and he said he couldn’t do all kinds of things that would be useful if he could do them. How could he know that Daenerys would stick to her word? How could be sure that Robb was making the right choice in trusting her and that they were making the right choice in trusting Robb?

Sansa wasn’t. Arya wasn’t. Even Jon wasn’t. Maybe it was just that things had been so bad for them for so long that it didn’t seem like things would ever fully turn around. They had all learned to keep their guard up, and it wasn’t easy to let it down again. Things didn’t go well for the Starks. That was just how things worked. But they had survived this long—or, well, Arya and Sansa had survived this long—through learning not to leave anything to chance. Preparing for the worst. Even if Bran was some kind of mystical wizard thingy, how could they possibly leave everything to chance on nothing more than his word?

Arya clambered up another eave, and she spotted Sandor down below on the battlements, watching the dragons with a mighty scowl. She laughed at him and pushed some snow off the roof that would fall and land on his head before she scampered away, making her way through one of the windows and into the library. There was no one in there, so she escaped quickly through a servants’ passage she remembered from when she was young. As she remembered, it took her to the top of the great hall, near the ceiling. A little door that allowed someone to crawl out onto the planks and clean off the chandeliers. She stayed in her little doorway; she wasn’t frightened of heights any longer, but it just made sense to stay hidden.

Robb and Daenerys were entering the hall, and she watched from above as they did. Daenerys looked cold and beautiful when she faced everyone, but Arya had seen the way she smiled for Robb and the rest of the family when she was up close. It was a queen’s face that she was wearing now, for all the northern lords who had gathered to greet her. It wasn’t her own.

Sansa entered next on Jaime Lannister’s arm. They were still talking. They would get annoying quickly, Arya was sure.

She should have probably been down there to walk in with Tyrion Lannister, if she was remembering right, but those were their parents’ stuffy rules, and she didn’t care. He could walk himself in. She ducked back outside through another open window, and she peered down off the walls to the other side. There were men directing each other as they set up camps there, too. These were Unsullied. She recognized their pointy hats, and they were all so stiff and formal. She’d been training with the Wildlings for so long, now. She wondered how she’d fare against one of them. In her experience, stiff and formal didn’t make for very good fighting, but she knew that they had a reputation, and she knew it was probably deserved. Just because she didn’t understand it, it didn’t mean it wasn’t true. She watched some of them training for a bit, putting off the inevitable moment when she’d have to go in to the feast. They’d be good, at least, against the dead. She wasn’t sure they’d make it very long in those vests, though. Sansa would have a fit and start making a million sleeves of fur to stick on their arms if she saw. The thought made Arya smile.

By the time she made it into the Great Hall, the feast was well underway. Robb and Daenerys were in the spots of honor at the high table, where Arya’s parents used to sit. Sansa sat on Robb’s other side, and a pretty woman with curly dark hair sat beside Daenerys. Arya was pleased to note that the craggy jealous man was down at the other end.

Robb seemed nervous, and he kept sending Sansa searching glances. He seemed a bit pale, too. Good. At least he understood that this was a big deal. Arya’d been annoyed by his letter to Sansa. She’d snuck into Sansa’s solar to read it, because Sansa hadn’t wanted to show her. It was just how blank his words were. So plain, telling his little sister what was going to happen. As if Sansa had no reason to be concerned! Sansa certainly wasn’t hiding her discomfort well. Jon was on her other side, and he kept talking to her quietly. Trying to catch her attention. Bran wasn’t there. Neither was Tyrion. Sansa, Arya noticed, had sat Jaime Lannister and Brienne beside each other at the table just below theirs, and Brienne was stiff and annoyed as Jaime babbled on about something.

She didn’t see any threats. She couldn’t see any problems. She didn’t want to sit at the high table, though. She stayed in her hiding place and watched them all, instead. Sometimes she liked it better when she wasn’t involved. When she could just watch everyone. Sometimes, oddly, it made her feel more connected to her family. She watched Robb coax a few reluctant smiles out of Sansa. She watched Sansa speak to him with a quiet patience that meant she was trying to explain her anger instead of hiding it away. She watched as wine loosened everyone up. Robb kissed Sansa on the temple, and she pushed him away with a laugh. The pretty dark-haired woman exchanged a few words with an Unsullied who stopped to deliver a report to Daenerys, and Daenerys giggled girlishly at whatever was said and hid her smile in a glass of wine. The craggy man scowled down at Lyanna Mormont when the little bear approached to chat. She was probably saying something dreadful. Arya wished she was close enough to hear.

Sansa suggested dancing, which everyone agreed to happily. No one agreed more enthusiastically than Jaime Lannister, which Brienne regarded with equal parts amusement and plain dread, though she helped him move their table aside to clear the floor. Robb tried to teach Daenerys some of the northern dances, though he was so awful at them that Sansa had to step in and show Daenerys herself. They spun together across the floor, and everyone was laughing and cheering. Knowing Sansa, her offer was probably at least a bit calculated, and it was a good calculation. People were watching. They breathed easier when they saw their beloved Lady Stark laughing with the dragon queen.

Jon watched from the high table, smiling wistfully down at them.

“Ask her to dance, you idiot,” Arya muttered. Jon didn’t, of course.

Jaime Lannister extended his missing hand to Brienne, but she frowned at him and shook her head. He went to the floor anyway, and soon he and Sansa were dancing together.

“Both of you,” Arya muttered, watching Brienne and Jon pine annoyingly, their eyes turned in the same direction. “Seven hells, you’re ridiculous.”

Not that she would want to dance with anyone, if she was out there. She’d never learned the steps, and anyway, there wasn’t anyone she could imagine ever wanting to dance with. She wasn’t like Brienne. Brienne, looking at her, it was so obvious. If the Kingslayer couldn’t see it, he was a bigger idiot than Brienne. Sansa’s sworn sword watched Lannister longingly, openly. She kept sipping at her wine as if she wanted to hide behind it. Her face was flushed. Arya wasn’t like that. If she wanted someone, she would simply tell them. What was so difficult about it, anyway?

The craggy man was watching Daenerys again, having escaped Lyanna Mormont’s scrutiny for a bit. Well. Maybe it was hard for some people. But Brienne had no reason to pine. It was clear Daenerys didn’t look at the craggy man the same way the craggy man looked at her, but Lannister looked back at Brienne in exactly the same way. Brienne had to see it. She wasn’t a total fool, was she?

They all looked like fools from where Arya was hidden. It reminded her of watching the mummers’ shows. People she knew, stories she knew, but presented in ways she didn’t understand. This was like that. Why were they behaving so stupidly?

At last, when the feast was over, she crept through the halls and into Sansa’s rooms.

“Well?” Sansa asked without turning around. Arya nearly bit her tongue in surprise.

“You’re getting better at that,” she said. She didn’t ask how Sansa had heard her enter, though she longed to. She wouldn’t let Sansa know that she’d been surprised.

“I’m getting used to it. So what did you learn?”

“Lots, though not much that you’d find very interesting. You’re still a good dancer. Though your partner wasn’t bad. Even with one hand. You probably shouldn’t have danced with him so much, though. Even I know that. It probably looked like something else to a bunch of those stuffy lords.”

“I tried to get him to ask Brienne again, but he refused.”

“His ego took enough of a beating the first time, I think. The man Daenerys was with. Who was that?”

Sansa seemed confused by the quick turn of conversation, and she took a moment to figure out what Arya was saying. She frowned slightly. “Jorah Mormont. Lady Lyanna’s relative. He escaped Westeros because father would have executed him for trading in slaves. Why?”

“Nothing. Just that he’s in love with Daenerys. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, but…you asked for anything.”

“I did,” Sansa said. “Thank you. What else?”

There wasn’t much to worry about, Arya didn’t think. But she told Sansa everything anyway. How Bran and Tyrion were off talking somewhere. How Varys snuck out after one of the Unsullied came to talk to him. How Daenerys frowned almost as much as she smiled.

Tell her, she thought suddenly. About Jon. About how he wanted to ask her to dance.

But she didn’t. She told Sansa about the way the camps outside were laid out, instead.

After, just as she was about to leave, Sansa said, “the wedding will be in a few days’ time.” She took a deep breath and continued, “and then the north won’t be its own kingdom anymore.”

“I know,” Arya said. She looked at her sister carefully. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to you.”

“It did.”

“It can still matter. You can still be sad.”

“I know,” Sansa said quietly. “I just…wanted it all to mean something. Mother and father. Rickon. Taking Winterfell back. Restoring the north. I wanted it to feel like…it was for a reason.”

Arya thought of that, later. A reason. She’d stopped thinking of reasons a long time ago. People were people, and they did horrible and messy and sometimes wonderful things. She’d met too many good people and too many bad people to avoid knowing that. But she remembered, after Sansa’s words, a time when she thought that things did have reasons. She wondered when exactly she had stopped. She thought it was probably the day her father died, though she wasn’t sure.

She found Robb in the godswood, under the heart tree. She’d known he’d be there, even though it was dark. He was with Jon. Both of them sitting silently. When she stepped into the ring of light cast by their torches, they smiled at her. Jon weary. Robb wary.

“You’re sure about this?” she asked. “About her?”

“Yes,” Robb said. There was no doubt in his tone. He didn’t look lost anymore, like he had before.

“And not just because we need her dragons?”

“Not just because we need her dragons,” Robb confirmed.

And so she knew, now. Even if they won, even if he lived, they would lose him.

She sat between them on the rock, and she looked up at the heart tree with them. She wished Sansa was with them too.

And Bran, she supposed.

Jon wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Robb ruffled her hair again. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She didn’t need them. Still, she wanted them close.

Just let it last a little longer, she begged the heart tree. Looking up into its impassive face, she found it hard to imagine the stupid old tree granting any favors. Still, she asked it anyway. Just let it last.

Chapter Text

Her gown was white and silver, with black and red on the bodice and the train in delicate swirls. The red on the underside of the gown looked like blood dragging through the snow when she looked at it the wrong way, so she tried not to.

A second wedding. She had hoped to avoid this once, and now she was walking gladly towards it. Her head was held high. She loved the man waiting at the end of the walk. She told herself these things again and again to make it less frightening. She had no idea why she needed to. It shouldn’t have been frightening at all.

She loved the man on her arm, too. That was her only true regret. He had been so many things to her. Brother, father, husband. Ser Jorah had been all of it at once, and she knew that he loved her as she loved Robb.

As she had loved Drogo.

She didn’t love Jorah in the same way. She could not apologize for it, and she would not regret it, but she did feel sorry for it, in a way. She didn’t want to make this more difficult for him. She had never loved someone who did not love her in return, but she imagined it must not be an easy thing. She had worried when he offered to walk her to the heart tree.

“Are you sure?” she had asked. He had only smiled, understanding her concern, and he had gently held her hand.

“He will be a better king than Daario would have been,” was all he said, with good humor that couldn’t entirely hide his sadness.

And a better king than you would have been, too, she thought, and she felt genuine sorrow for him. He had found his way back to her, as he had promised he would. He was still her most loyal friend, even after everything. She was glad he was with her, but she knew what it had cost him. She didn’t say anything else. She merely pulled him down so that she could kiss his brow.

It felt right to be on his arm. He was dressed well, and he walked proudly. He had been worried, she knew, about seeing his living relatives, but Lyanna Mormont was a girl of twelve or so who had merely looked him up and down and declared him fit enough to stand against the dead for the honor of their house. Jorah had merely laughed. Later, he said, “she reminds me of my father”, and he had seemed lighter, since.

He was home again, in the North, among the snow. Daenerys wasn’t, but she knew that she would adjust as long as she was here. She had done nothing but adjust in her life. She had found power where there was none. Comfort and strength when men wanted her weak and miserable. The north was not so bad as that, and they had a war to win.

The wood around Winterfell was lit with candles and lanterns, casting a dim and beautiful light that nearly took her breath as she walked. Everything was quiet, draped and decorated and painted in silver and red, and her breath fogged up around her face, and perhaps it could have been a terrifying place, if she didn’t feel as safe as she did. It felt like an old and powerful force was around her. Perhaps that was silly. But there was a hush over everything that made this wedding feel almost like a dream. Quiet and melancholy, except for the emotion that swelled in her heart. There could not be anything less like her first wedding in all the worlds. She was grateful for that. 

She had seen Sansa out in the wood for days, directing her people, planning the decorations with the same kind of intensity with which she planned rationing or storage or weapon production in preparation for the war. Out of all the Starks, Daenerys still found Sansa the most difficult to read, but also the easiest to understand. They were not very much alike, she and Sansa, but they had experienced enough of the same kinds of horrors that there was a kind of sympathy that existed between them.

Sansa was still anxious about the alliance. She was still worried about relinquishing any of the power that she and Jon had seized back for their family. Daenerys understood that, even as she was relieved that her kingdom would be technically whole once again. Perhaps she would have been more wary of Sansa once, but she understood Sansa’s reservations now, after long conversations with Robb in the days they spent together on the road. 

She understood better now why Sansa was so quietly distrustful and opposed to the wedding that had seemed to Daenerys to have everything to recommend it. It wasn’t just a wedding to Sansa, and it wasn’t just an alliance. It was a loss of power. It was a loss of the security and safety that Sansa had hoped for with the independence of the north. Dany understood; of course she understood. Security and safety had been all she had longed for once, and there was still a part of her that craved more power and more men to guard her; she knew all too well what it was like to be powerless, and she would do anything to prevent herself from experiencing that level of powerlessness again.

Perhaps that fact had something to do with why her first instinct had been to be suspicious of Sansa, or to assume that Sansa wanted power for the same reasons men wanted power. But Robb loved Sansa, and he was open about what Sansa had been through, and that allowed Dany to see so much more of Sansa than she would have seen otherwise. Dany understood what it was like when you had nothing and then gained it, steadily, becoming free from the fear that had shackled you when you were powerless. She understood how terrifying it could be to lose that power, or even to risk losing it. It hurt Dany’s pride to know that her future goodsister still didn’t fully trust her, but she knew why, and she could only hope that Sansa’s trust would come in time.

Sansa, standing off to the side of the heart tree beside Robb, was dressed in dark grey and black. She and Jon Snow both, standing together with Arya, who wore a tunic of brown and blue that was the most colorful item of clothing Daenerys could see on any of the gathered northerners. Her own people stood out. They wore their northern-style cloaks, but their clothing was their own, even though many of them shivered in the thin, bright fabric. It meant so much that they were here, and it meant so much to see them. She had had many homes in her life, but she was most at peace among her people. Wherever they were, she was at her strongest, and she was at her happiest, too.

It was a fairly small wedding ceremony. Missandei had been eager to plan something grand, but Daenerys found that she didn’t want grandness. She wanted intimacy. She wanted it to feel like family. She knew it wasn’t entirely possible. It was in many ways a marriage for love, but it was primarily a marriage of alliance, and that alliance needed to be witnessed. They needed his family and representatives from their northern lords. Her own family, her closest advisors and friends, and people from the lands she had conquered. But Daenerys had already lived so much of her life for other people. She wanted it to be as intimate as it could be. Sansa and Missandei had done a wonderful job of making that desire a reality.

Dany walked past her people. She smiled as she did. She didn’t have to fake her happiness, but it was important that they see that she was happy with her choice. As much as she wanted this day to be for her, she knew it wasn’t. Not fully. It was theirs, too. It belonged to all of her people. To the entire realm. The enormity of it had hit her at several points during the day. As she bathed. As she dressed. As she stood on Jorah’s arm under the archway of the door. They were reuniting Westeros to fight the dead. They were going to take her family’s throne back from Cersei Lannister. All of Westeros standing with her to end the reign of the Lannister queen. There were moments she could hardly wait to get started. There were moments when the enormity of this alliance and this marriage and these choices made her want to run back home, to that house with the red door, and hide under the blankets. Just a little girl. A lonely, quiet little girl who wasn’t queen of anything. A lost princess, that was all.

She didn’t turn, and she didn’t run. She wasn’t that little girl any longer. She kept walking.

Robb stood under the red-leafed branches of the heart tree. He had been scrubbed clean, his beard trimmed and his hair tamed. He looked little like the man she had first begun to fall in love with. That man had been hollowed-out and weighed down by his guilt. Recovering still from wounds suffered before she met him. The man who stood and waited for her now, the man who was to be her husband, had grown more whole since they had met. He smiled more. He no longer faded away when the guilt hit him too strongly. He stood on his own. He was unwavering, bright, happy. She knew he’d had his doubts, as she had. She knew it wasn’t so easy for him to dismiss the horrors of his past. But, like her, he was marshalling the part of himself that wanted to run. He was choosing her in the same way she was choosing him: in spite of his fears. It was love, that choice. Daenerys was sure of it. 

She hardly listened to the ceremony. She said the right words when they were required, but she stumbled over a few. Laughed at herself after. She heard the gentle laughter of the crowd in response, and Varys looked quite pleased with it, afterward. He had told her more than once that Westeros didn’t want a cold ruler. They didn’t want someone who was difficult to reach. They wanted someone strong, but someone who they understood. They wanted someone above them, but not so far above them that they could not see her. They would like that she stumbled and smiled and laughed at herself. They will love you if they feel they know you, Varys had said, and she could see the love in their eyes now. That felt like home, too.

Robb was smiling a larger smile than she had ever seen on him, and she loved him. He kissed her when the vows were spoken, and she loved him. He gazed at her. Snowflakes were falling into his curls and melting there. She loved him then, too.

Her husband. The man she loved. How strange to do things in this order. To love and then wed, knowing already how she felt. How she would feel. She had been so afraid on the day of her first wedding. She had been sure that she would die, or that she would fade away into nothing. Everything about the Dothraki had been unknown to her. Drogo had been cold and terrifying, hard as steel and leeching the warmth from her. It had been easy to forget that as the years passed, because she had grown to love him, but she had despaired at first. There was no despair this time, and she was sorry for all the women who would never know anything but terror on the day of their wedding. She was sorry for Sansa Stark and for what her own mother must have felt, being made to marry the brother she had not loved. She was sorry for women who had come before her, and for the ones who would no-doubt come after her.

You can change that, she told herself. You will be queen. You will rule. And you can break that wheel, too.

The army of the dead did not exist. Cersei Lannister was dead or exiled and gone away. It was only her, Dany. The child she had been and the woman she had been forced to grow into. Every other outside part of her melted away until she was just the essential matter at her center. This was all she had wanted, once. A family. A place. A purpose.

The moment ended, because that was what moments did. The gathered watchers cheered, and Daenerys looked out at them. Missandei was crying happily, and Grey Worm had his arm through hers. She loved them for their union and for their support. Tyrion was smiling, looking as pleased with himself as if he was the one who thought of the alliance. Varys was grinning in a similar manner. She loved them, too, she realized. Though they annoyed her, she loved them still.

Ser Jorah was standing off to the side with a grim expression, but he bowed his head to her when she looked his way. He, too, was loved by her.

The Starks stood strong and sturdy, like the grey trees in their godswood, watching everything. Arya was playing with a knife in her hands. Flipping it around, seeming to ignore everything else. Sansa’s eyes were glimmering, and she held tightly to Jon Snow’s hand. Jon was smiling at her, amused or perhaps wistful. Bran was watching Dany. His smile was remote, distant, but it was there.

Brienne of Tarth stood watch over them in her armor. Jaime Lannister stood beside her. The Kingslayer. He had avoided Dany whenever he could. She was surprised to see him at her wedding. Then again, he had sworn himself so visibly to Sansa Stark. What better place to show everyone that he meant to do his duty?

He avoided her gaze here, as well, though she could not say if it was out of fear of what she would do, or if it was because he could not stop looking at the warrior woman beside him. She hated it when he did that, because it would be so much easier to hate him if she didn’t find their odd courtship so amusing. But perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps hate wasn’t what she should feel for him anyway; her father had been mad, and she still didn’t quite know why his youngest Kingsguard had turned on him, but she knew how circumstances could drive people to commit desperate acts, and she knew that she wanted to be the kind of person, the kind of queen, who would ask the right questions instead of making all the wrong assumptions.

When the Kingslayer had come to she and Robb, one of the first days after they set out from Dragonstone, and he had told them what he knew of his sister’s defenses, she had wondered at him. After he had gone, after he had given them all the information they could have wanted, she had mentioned it to Robb. She couldn’t think of a reason to trust his intentions.

“Why would he tell us?” she asked. “The stories say he loves his sister.”

“He does,” Robb answered. “But she isn’t the only one he loves, and he’s smarter than the stories say. He knows where this war is headed, and he knows he can’t save his sister. He’s telling us because there are people he can save.”

Perhaps it was only the little girl inside her who had longed for something soft and pretty. Perhaps it was the decorations in the godswood. The soft lights from the torches. The way everything glittered and glimmered in the falling snow. The guests filtered back inside, and perhaps it was only their hushed whispers, the way they sounded as they went. Perhaps it was Robb’s hand in her own, and the way he looked back through the foggy trees with a rueful smile on his face.

Whatever it was, she saw love everywhere, in everybody.

This, she thought, is why I want to be queen. I love them, and I want them to be happy. I want them to fall in love. To live, to have children, to raise children, to teach their children how to build a better world. They’ll never be able to do it if their parents don’t survive. If their parents aren’t allowed to love whoever they want.

This is why I want to be queen. This is why I must win.

“Are you ready, husband?” she asked Robb. He turned his back on the trees, and he met her gaze. His smile was warm, full. He was not the same man she had met, and she was not the same woman.

“Yes,” he said. Firm. “I’m ready.”

There was, obviously, no wedding feast. Half the guests seemed confused, loitering around the great hall, whispering about the lack of music, but Daenerys and Robb moved quickly past them. Robb’s hand was tight in her own, but it loosened some when they were in the hallway, moving towards his rooms. When they were in his chamber, safely unmolested by anyone who would try and enact some of the traditions Daenerys had been warned about, he breathed out a shaking breath.

“It’s all right,” she said. She took off her fur cloak. The fire had been well tended to when they were outside. She went to Robb’s side and turned him to face her. He had been looking into the fire. He was shaken.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You don’t have to be.”

“I didn’t think it would…”

“I know,” she said. She fumbled with the unfamiliar clasp on his cloak, but then she managed to lift it from his shoulders and let it fall to the ground.

“It wasn’t even my wedding,” he said. Her hands went to his waist, his hips. Holding him steady. His hands went first to her shoulders, then swept up her throat to her jaw. He held her face and looked at her. His hands were cold. “I just…sometimes I mix them up. Sometimes I don’t even remember my own.”

“I know,” she said, though she didn’t. But she knew what it was like to remember things incorrectly, and she knew what it was like to hurt from things that had happened long ago. “It’s over. It’s over.”

“We’re wed,” he said, and she nodded. She smiled up at him. She watched him soften before her eyes, watched him realize that no one was going to hurt them. She wished that she could help in some other ways. The dragon inside her simmered with a need to hurt the ones who had made him look so afraid. But she didn’t need to be the dragon to help him. She only needed to be herself. The thought was thrilling.

“Husband,” she said, and he smiled down at her. Crooked and still a little lost, but solid enough. He swept in and kissed her. His face and his hands were both cold, but they warmed quickly in the heat from the fire. He was gentler than any man she had ever kissed. Even Drogo, when he was gentlest with her, hadn’t been so careful. He took down her hair, first, letting it fall down her back. She helped him with his clothing. They were careful with each other. They had bedded each other already. Many times, on the road from Dragonstone. They were both already once wed, and there was no need to keep from each other when they loved each other.

But this felt different. The slowness of their movements. The care they took with each other. Dany felt choked with emotion. She had cried on her first weeding night, she remembered, but that was out of fear and discomfort and loneliness. Now it was just overwhelming. To hold and be held by someone she loved. She had spent so many years in between feeling lost. Bereft. Afraid. Now she was so devoid of any of those feelings that it seemed impossible.

Please, she thought. Let this husband live. Let me love him for longer than the last one.

When they were both bare before the fire, Daenerys could see his scars. She had touched them before. The places where the arrows had entered his chest and nearly killed him. She touched them again now, watching the way the shadows from the firelight made them look deeper. He could have died before ever meeting her, and she never would have known him. He was beautiful and brilliant and hers. He made her laugh. He made her want to be a better queen. He made her want so many things that she never thought to want again.

He was looking down at her, and she could see that he was thinking the same thing. She did not doubt him. She did not waste any time in that. She knew him. Her husband. Her love.

Chapter Text

The wedding had been over for some time. Jaime was in his small room, trying not to think about it.

He had never had much use for weddings, before. Why would he? The only woman he had ever loved was his sister, and he had sworn himself into the Kingsguard so young. What use were weddings to a man like him? Actually, they could be an acute kind of agony, if he let his guard down. When he was younger, and he still thought Cersei loved him enough that she might one day agree to run away with him, he would imagine it. And even as he got older and started to realize the impossibility of it, he would dream of it. Cersei would be in a beautiful red and gold dress. She would glimmer at the end of the aisle as she walked towards him. Myrcella and Tommen would be with her, escorting her. Joffrey would be, well, not there. It was his fantasy, after all. Not Cersei’s. She would smile at him when she saw him waiting for her. Some small sept in some faraway land. She would walk to him. They would say their vows. He would kiss her openly, in front of witnesses. No one would threaten them or the children. No one would need to know they were twins. They would live as husband and wife, and they would love one another openly.

Even in the beginning, they were silly dreams. Cersei turned him down every time he asked, and even he wasn’t so thick or so romantic as to think she’d ever choose to leave every bit of power behind just for him. Even when she was at her most powerless, she hadn’t considered it. Even when she was at her most miserable with Robert, she had scorned Jaime’s foolish ideas of leaving together for somewhere new. But they were dreams he’d held close for such a long time that sometimes he fooled himself into believing they were possible.

He hadn’t thought of marriage in years, but seeing Brienne standing there in the snow…

He had known already that he loved her. But seeing her in the godswood opened up that part of himself that he thought he had buried completely.

He wanted to marry her.

He had spent the last nights of their journey north sleeping beside her in her tent. She had been hesitant to let him in, that first night, but she had not turned him away on any of the nights that followed, and he had pressed his advantage. They slept close together. It was easy to blame the cold, and perhaps that was why she didn’t mind his nearness. After everything he had done, after how he had hurt her with his attempts to secure himself a death he could be happy with, he simply wanted to be close to her. His love still hung there between them, denied and disbelieved. Hers hung there too, her own panicked attempts at deflection doing nothing to convince him that it didn’t exist. There was still so much to overcome, but it felt almost possible when they were in her tent together. She looked at him as if she didn’t think he could see her. Like what passed between them there wouldn’t be remembered in the morning, although it always was. She touched his face, kept her fingers wrapped around his maimed wrist. She shivered when his fingers grazed over the skin of her pale throat, and when he kissed her knuckles. It was just different there. Things were allowed that she never would have endured anywhere else. Every night he thought of kissing her, and every night he convinced himself that she needed to be the one to make that choice.

One morning, he had awoken to find her pressed against his back as he slept, her arm tucked around his waist. He had been warm, and hard already. Her breath on the back of his neck made it worse. He had lain there, his heart pounding.

He had known already that he loved her. He had known already that he wanted her. But the dream of it was one thing. Jaime was used to dreaming of things that he could not have. He had dreamed for so long of a love from his sister that was equal to the love he felt for her. For softness, for warmth, for anything other than the scraps he had been given. Treasured scraps, yes, but scraps all the same. He had learned to do without the things he wanted when he was young, because he learned early that life was not a song. What you wanted and what the world gave you were rarely the same. At least he had had Cersei. At least she had offered him what love and affection she could. It was enough for him, for the Kingslayer made into a bitter old man before his time, angry and helpless at once. As a boy he’d dreamed of nicer things, but they were not the dreams of men, and his father and his tutors and the world had bled those dreams out of him, killing the boy he had been.

He felt like a boy again, in the tent that morning with Brienne nestled up behind him. He felt like a boy listening to a story or a song. A boy lying in bed dreaming of kissing his love, pulling her close, protecting her and being protected by her in turn. It was easy in the dim, cool light of morning to forget his aches and hurts and losses. It was easy to forget that he was lying on the ground, marching to a certain death. How difficult to think of anything but Brienne, when she was so big and solid and warm against him.

Soft, too. She was soft. He was half turned onto his stomach, and she was half draped over him, her body pressing him into the ground just enough that he felt surrounded by her. She had slept curled beside him before, when the Mummers took his hand and the fever made him shiver long into the night. But she had never slept with this abandonment of her own protection. She was boneless and close and there was no tension in her body at all. It felt like trust. It felt like love, too. He stared at the wall of the tent beside him. He was too old for this. He was too old for new discoveries about himself, for falling in love again. He had loved poorly. He had loved wrong. He had loved too much and too destructively. There should not be room inside him now for this. This welling warmth. This blanketed safety that being with Brienne brought.

He had always been Cersei’s protector. Cersei’s sword.

If I were a woman, I would be Cersei, he had told himself, for years and years. If Cersei were a man, she would be me.

But Cersei was not a man. She needed him to be the man she was not. And so he had been. She had wrapped their love in pretty words about being the same person, the same soul, the perfection and completion of one another, and he had loved her, and so he had believed her. He had always been her Jaime. He was strong. He was hard when he had to be. He was cruel when he had to be. He pushed boys out windows, and he marched off to kill old women for Cersei’s petty grudges, and he never questioned or doubted or stopped to think about his actions. What was there to think about? There was only Cersei.

He couldn’t be that man anymore. Cersei’s Jaime. Cruel and sarcastic and biting. He didn’t want to be that man. He wanted to be the man he felt like when he woke in Brienne’s tent, with her beautiful bulk warm and half atop him. He wanted to be the kind of man who allowed that swelling warmth in his chest. The blockage in his throat, suddenly. The overwhelming nature of the safety. He wanted to be the kind of man who welcomed that.

Cersei would have scorned him. His father would have been disgusted with him. Even Tyrion would have laughed at him. Safe, they would have jeered. Why do you need to feel safe? You are meant to be strong. You are meant to be a knight, a lord, a protector. She is the anomaly, not you. She’s meant for dresses and embroidery, not swords and scars. She has corrupted you. She has changed you. You should show her what it’s like to be a woman, and you should show her that you are a man.

It was easy to call their voices to mind, and it was easy to hear their jeering questions, but it wasn’t easy to answer them.

Why? Why did he need to feel safe? Why did it feel so good to feel safe with someone else? So trusted? He didn’t know. He just knew that with Brienne, he didn’t have to try. He didn’t have to be anyone but the man she wanted him to be. It was the same man that he had always wanted to be but had buried for years beneath someone else. She had found him, somehow. Unearthed him. Her regard and her hopes and her expectations gave him the excuse he never had to try and be that man. Everyone else in his life had done their best to twist and mold that man into something else. Break off the useless bits of him that didn’t serve them. Shame him into changing himself into the man that they thought he should be. But Brienne…She held him in her sleep like he was a man worthy of protection, and he had never been that man before.

My protector. Hadn’t he called her that once, to someone? He remembered thinking the words. My protector. She had protected him when Locke cut off his hand. He remembered little from those first days, but he remembered her. She was strong. Stronger than he had been. He wept into her shoulder at night, and she only held him tighter. She had not scorned him or laughed at him or pushed him away. She shushed him, murmured to him. She’d hated him, but still she had cared for him.

He paced his small room after the wedding. There wasn’t much room for it. He knew he should go back down there, but he’d had to excuse himself before he made an utter mess of things by actually going up to her and speaking to her. He hated being here, in this castle. He’d much rather be freezing in a tent outside if it meant that she was with him. This small room was too big without anyone else inside it. It made him worry too much. Where was she? What was she thinking? Would she ever believe him, or had he too long been the man his family had made of him?

He felt restless. Unsettled in a way he hadn’t been in weeks. Not the frenetic despair that had seeped into him during the battle, and not the listlessness of after. Just…restless. Like there was something missing.

There was a cawing, and a bird landed on his sill. A raven, carrying something in its beak. It dropped it, and the small note fluttered to the floor.

Godswood, it read.

Jaime looked up at the bird again. It regarded him impassively. Jaime sighed.

“Fine,” he said.

Bran Stark waited for him beneath the heart tree. The torches had all been extinguished, so he was sitting in the dark.

It could not have been more ominous.

Is he finally going to kill me, then? Jaime wondered.

“Jaime Lannister,” Bran said. “I did not expect you to come.”

What little Jaime knew of Bran’s return, he had heard from Sansa in letters that were often chiefly of other things. There were snippets relating to Bran’s oddness. Little hints that the boy wasn’t the same. When Jaime had seen him waiting with the other Starks in Winterfell’s courtyard, it had been all that Jaime could to do greet him. His palm had been clammy and cold with nervous sweat. He had remembered vividly the feel of the boy’s tunic in his hand as he grabbed it. Could remember the look of horror on the boy’s face as he pushed him. Sansa had claimed in her letters that Bran was the one who wanted Jaime’s worst crime covered up. She had claimed that Bran wanted Jaime to be accepted by the northern army. Why? Sansa hadn’t been sure, and Jaime couldn’t figure it out either. He’d gotten no answers when they met in the courtyard. Bran had merely nodded and smiled, and Jaime had known that there would be more to come. Apparently this was it.

“You sent for me,” he said.

“I did,” Bran said. “But you could have ignored me.” Jaime forced himself to continue walking so that he could stand directly in front of Bran. He hated it out here, in the godswood. This was a place for Starks, and he was not a Stark.

Bran was looking up at him. The remoteness of his expression was difficult to look at. Difficult to look at Bran at all and not feel the guilt of his past choices. More difficult now that Bran had been so changed. Perhaps it would have been rough to face a Bran who was entirely himself, who could hate Jaime for what Jaime had done to him. But this…

“Why did you come?” Bran asked. Jaime considered his answer carefully.

“Because I am trying,” he started slowly. “To make up for what I have done. What I did to you…”

“It was in the past,” Bran said. “I’m not the same person I was.”

“Nor am I.”

“Everything you did, you did for love. To protect your family. To protect your sister. That man hasn’t changed. You would still protect the ones you love. And yet you regret it.” 

“My children are dead anyway. And my sister is lost to me. Of course I regret it.”

“And a boy nearly died,” Bran said. “A boy was left crippled.”

Jaime winced at the term, and he could not help but look down at his stump. He’d said something to that effect, hadn’t he? The day after he pushed Bran. Something about not wanting to live if he was going to be crippled. He had been saying for so long that he wasn’t the same man who pushed Bran Stark. So often and so vehemently that it had stopped meaning anything. But it was true, wasn’t it? He had survived a thing that would have been unthinkable to him before. He had lingered even when he thought that he should have been allowed to die a clean death and be forgotten.

“Yes,” he finally said. “And I am sorry for that.”

“You are,” Bran said flatly. It was impossible to tell if it was a question or a statement. His expression was still unreadable. Calculating, in a way, although barely even that.

“Yes,” Jaime said. “My family. My father. My sister. I…”

He trailed off. What use was it, to describe it to this boy? This creature? Whatever it was that Bran had become, he would either understand or he wouldn’t. Jaime had lived his life for his family, and he had not done enough to question them when it would have made a difference. Any explanations he could offer would be little better than excuses, and they would not be worthy ones.

“You didn’t ask me here to talk about that,” he said.

“No.”

“Then why did you?”

“You say you’ve changed, but you fear you haven’t. I asked you to come because you need to understand that you have. The Lion of Lannister died at Highgarden. Only Jaime Lannister remains. You were both men, once. Just as I am both Bran and the Three Eyed Raven.”

“I don’t think it’s like that at all,” Jaime couldn’t help but quip. “Being the Lion of Lannister never gave me much in the way of powers.”

“Didn’t it?” Bran asked. “It gave you strength. Certainty that you no longer have. A reputation that struck fear into the hearts of anyone who dared oppose you. It gave you much, but you still have much to offer. Lion of Lannister. Kingslayer. Ser Jaime. You have been many men, but no longer.”

“They were all me. They were always me.”

“No. They weren’t. But I understand why you would say so. Only you would have the strength to come here.”

“Why am I here?” Jaime could not help but ask. Why did Bran think he had come? Why did Bran think he was fighting? It wasn’t bravery. It wasn’t a choice. It was honor. It was the right thing. It was…

“Love,” Bran said. It was startling to hear it. “It’s why you do anything.”

Was that something to be embarrassed by? Perhaps it was. Jaime felt himself flushing and looking down at his stump again. Yes. It was why he did anything. Was he so predictable? Had he changed so little? Love was why he pushed Bran Stark from that window, and love was why he was here now. Was that all he was? A man who loved?

“I am here for honor,” he said. “Because I swore an oath to your mother to protect your sisters. And because it is the right thing to do.”

“Yes,” Bran agreed passively. “Love is many things for you. Honor. Innocence. Faith. You are a knight who wishes he was a better one. You are a man who means to fulfill an oath no one expects you to keep. You want to believe in the stories that Bran Stark always liked best. You’re here because you think it’s your fate to die in this war, and you think you may as well die honorably and well, if you could not live your life that way. It isn’t only love of others that drives you.”

Jaime made himself nod. He was embarrassed. To be so seen.

“You should not give up hope,” Bran said. From anyone else, Jaime would have said it was blind optimism, but something told him that blind optimism was not one of Bran’s faults. “There are many paths. This is one. You may see the end of these wars.”

That seemed impossible to Jaime. What would he even do afterward?

Then again, he had thought the same thing during the battle at Highgarden. He had thought the same thing when he returned to Cersei after Riverrun and the Sept. He thought the same thing when he lost his hand. He had thought it when he realized he was going to kill Aerys. He had not been able to imagine surviving any of those things, but he had. Surely there could be an after for this, too.

“It doesn’t matter,” he found himself saying. “It doesn’t matter if I survive. It only matters if we succeed.”

“Yes,” Bran agreed. “You are forgiven.”

Startled by the change in conversation, Jaime frowned at him.

“I shouldn’t be,” he said. “And if you aren’t Bran Stark, as you keep saying, then you don’t have the right to forgive me for him.”

“Maybe not. But I am enough of Bran Stark to know. It is difficult to hate a man when you understand him, and Bran Stark knew. Not at first. You terrified at him at first. But then he knew.”

Jaime flinched at that. He couldn’t look into this creature’s eyes any longer. If he had never pushed Bran Stark from that tower, Bran Stark would still be a boy.

“I needed to become this,” Bran said, as if he had read Jaime’s thoughts.

“He was only a boy,” Jaime snapped. “It shouldn’t have been him.”

“Perhaps not, but it had to be him,” Bran said. Jaime shook his head. “He forgives you anyway.”

“He shouldn’t,” Jaime said. He wanted to walk away. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to be forgiven.

“You’ve forgiven things you shouldn’t have before,” Bran said. The sept. Jaime flinched again.

“I haven’t,” he said. “I didn’t forgive it. It was unforgivable. I didn’t stay with her because I forgave her.”

“I wasn’t talking about one action. I was talking about everything. Years of it. You looked the other way. Your sister. Your father. Even your brother. They all did and said things you could not support. They were cruel, and they made moves against innocents that made you wonder if there was even a point to knighthood if men like you were just going to sully it with inaction. Aerys. You looked the other way when he killed Bran Stark’s uncle and grandfather.”

Jaime could not respond to that. It was true. He had stood by. When Rhaella screamed. When Aerys laughed. When people burned in front of him.

“I didn’t do enough,” he said.

“You never told anyone. Not until the bath at Harrenhal.” Jaime was silent. Stubbornly, perhaps.

Who would have believed me? I was sitting on the throne as my father sacked the city. Who would have believed that I killed Aerys for any reason other than my family’s power?

And if they had…

Elia and Rhaenys and Aegon murdered horrifically by his father’s own men. Rhaella raped by her cruel husband. Terrified, screaming. Rickard and Brandon Stark dying afraid, in pain, while Jaime stood and did nothing.

He could bear their scorn and their ridicule. He could bear to be called Kingslayer behind his back. He could bear knowing that he had done a noble thing that no one would ever know the truth of. He could not bear to be praised for it. It hadn’t been enough. What did it matter if the scorn was for the right reason or the wrong? It was still deserved.

“I don’t care if they know,” he said. Bran very kindly did not contest that, though he smiled slightly, which felt like the same thing.

“You were strong enough to do the right thing once,” Bran said. “You made a choice to stop an evil man even though you knew it would lead to condemnation. Even though it was painful. Are you strong enough now?”

“No,” Jaime answered. “I won’t kill her.”

“You don’t have to. You just have to realize that there is no saving her.”

Jaime shook his head at that. He stared at Bran. This emotionless creature who pretended to be Bran. What did he understand about love? What did he understand about Jaime and his sister? What did he understand about the kind of devotion that Jaime had had for Cersei for years? Even if he couldn’t support her any longer. Even if he couldn’t go back to her. Even if he no longer wanted the same things. He couldn’t just let her die. Not without trying to save her.

“The Night King needs to be stopped because he is a destabilizing influence,” Bran said carefully. His gaze was steady. “Your sister is the same. The realm will burn as long as she’s in charge.”

“She’s,” Jaime started. Ready to make her excuses. He couldn’t.

“She isn’t willing to stop. She isn’t willing to change. She doesn’t regret. That’s the difference,” Bran said. “You do. That’s why you have a chance.” Jaime didn’t argue this time. He thought of her, in Kings Landing. The way she used to be. Waiting for him. Soft in his arms. But that wasn’t her anymore, was it? Remembering her that way…he wasn’t remembering her in truth. He was remembering what he wanted to remember. “She’ll never be the woman you remember,” Bran said. “She never was, and you know that.” Jaime couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t even muster up the energy to be annoyed at how easily Bran had seen him. He only shook his head.

“Even if she isn’t. I can’t…”

“You don’t have to,” Bran said again. “No one will ask you to. You only have to stay.”

He was so certain and steady. Steady like Brienne when she looked at him and said that he would leave her and go back to Cersei. Certain like Tyrion when he said the same. Everyone expected it of him. Everyone. Bran didn’t, though. Bran seemed to know how impossible the choice was. How monumental it was for him to make it: Jaime had never willingly abandoned Cersei before.

But Bran expected it, too. He made it simple. You forsake Cersei, or you give up everything else.

When he put it that way, it was easy.

“I’ll do what I have to,” he said, and Bran nodded.

“You will,” he agreed.

Chapter Text

Euron Greyjoy could not be less to her tastes if he tried to be. Clownish was the kindest word Cersei would have used to describe him. He swaggered like a much more important man, made several crude gestures, and spoke flippantly of losing control of the Iron Islands to his niece and nephew all within the first few minutes of his arrival. Since his fleet was the only reason Cersei was even allowing him in her throne room, it struck her as a rather bold attempt at tricking her into overlooking his most fatal of faults, and she had no patience for it.

“What good are you without your islands?” she wondered, and Euron laughed. Qyburn was frowning at her, trying to catch her attention so he could signal something to her. She ignored him. It was difficult to tell what Qyburn was thinking these days, because he was always so disapproving of everything she did. Whether she listened to his advice or not. Whether she deferred to him or told him off. Always he wore that worried frown, and she was tired of trying to appease it. What gave him the right to look at her that way? He was her Hand. He existed to serve her, much the same way as her Mountain did. He had known that once, and that was why she had chosen him. He could do with a reminder that Cersei could easily find another man to serve her. Perhaps she would spread her own whispers. Let him think that she was looking for a replacement for him. Perhaps that might frighten him back into compliance.

“I have loftier ambitions,” Euron said. He was leering at her. As if she would not notice. As if it did not matter if she noticed. Men. They came in different trappings. They spoke in different tongues. At their core, they were all the same, and she loathed them.

Jaime…

Jaime had been different, but he was lost. She would not think of him.

Joffrey…

No. Joffrey had been a terrifying little monster. Her son. She had loved him. She mourned him still. But he was a man like any of them. The way he had hated her sometimes. The way he had mocked her tears for Jaime, and the way he had frightened her…

Euron Greyjoy means to marry me. That seemed obvious. Men were men. She was older than she had been. Her close-cropped hair gave her a severe look that she hated when she caught sight of it in the mirror. She wasn’t a soft maiden any longer. She could not toss her curls and flutter her eyelashes and pout alluringly. Even if she could, she would not want to. She was too tired for that. But men were men, and they wanted power, and power was the one thing she still had that could entice a man so lecherous. She was still beautiful. She knew that too. But it was not the kind of beauty that men craved. It was the kind of beauty that men whispered about, but they wanted softer things to fuck. Weaker things, too. She tilted her chin up. The throne on its dais put her above him, physically above him, and she was glad. He should know his place.

“Loftier ambitions,” she drawled. Her eyebrows ticked up lazily. She would not show him anything on her face. It was carved of marble, the lines smoothed out by powder and by the control she had over her expression. His boldness and irreverence meant that he did not think her as powerful as she was: he thought her desperate. He didn’t care if she was disgusted with him. He didn’t care if she was angry. He thought that she needed him. He thought that she would accept him in whatever state he was offered.

If Jaime was here…

Jaime wasn’t. She could not rely on him to throw Euron to the floor and cut his throat. It was Jaime as a boy she pictured. Jaime, seventeen, newly raised to the Kingsguard. Jaime strong and valiant and so completely hers. He had given up everything for her. He would have given her all the rest, too, if the dragon queen hadn’t taken him.

Jaime would kill him, if he was here.

Yes, Jaime would kill Euron for his disrespect. He would kill him out of jealousy, too. She would pretend at anger for his shortsightedness, and maybe she would even feel it, just a bit, but she would also feel that shiver down her spine that she used to feel when he wore his love and devotion so openly. The sneer on his face. The cutting remark he would growl out before he did it.

But Jaime wasn’t with her. Jaime was gone. Only Qyburn sat beside her. He was a quailing old man who could work wonders, but the thought of him trying to kill Euron Greyjoy for her was laughable.

The Mountain, of course, would serve. He would rip Euron limb from limb if she ordered it, but there would be no passion in the deed, and that was what she wanted. She didn’t want a passionless creature under her thrall. She wanted someone who would be so mad with devotion for her that he would do anything.

You had that, and you drove him away. She silenced that voice inside her. Her unwelcome guest.

Euron was still smiling at her. His lecherousness only grew more pronounced as they stared at one another, neither one wanting to speak first. He thought, like all men thought, that he would win her, regardless of the fact that he had nothing to offer. Or maybe he didn’t think he would win her at all. Maybe he believed she would continue to hate him. He thought she would marry him regardless, and hand over the reins to her kingdom. Perhaps that would be an even greater victory for the shameless wretch. To have her captured, snarling and hissing like a caged and declawed lioness. He could try it. She felt more than usually centered today. Her anger simmered safely beneath her skin. It didn’t flare. It was in no danger of making her do anything rash. It felt more like the cold calculation of her father’s hate than the fiery temper of Jaime’s.

Euron Greyjoy was a nothing of a man. A gnat. She had courted him for his islands and for those rumors about a horn, but if he had none of that to show her, then that meant she didn’t need him. She could string him up with the others. The crows had gone hungry the past few days. Her citizens had been terrified into compliance. Any sign of rebellion had been met with execution. She paid her spies in fish and food, and so they turned on each other like beasts, giving her Goldcloaks their brothers and sisters and neighbors to be hung above the walls of the city. The strongest were raised up and made into Goldcloaks to serve her. They were the ones who didn’t care that their fellows starved as long as they weren’t starving. The message was clear: loyalty will be rewarded, and dissent will be punished. The peace would not last. It was a bluff that would not hold forever. But it was strong enough for now, and more fear would hopefully strengthen it for a time.

What message would Euron send? Probably not much of one. He was nothing to anyone in this city. His people were all on their hard, windswept islands, convincing themselves that their raping and pillaging was a noble way of life just because it was difficult. They bored her and disgusted her in equal measure. She could have him cut into pieces and thrown into the ocean. Perhaps some fish would find him easier to digest than she would.

And yet you do need him, a voice reminded her. A petty, smug inner voice that she hated. Think of your enemies. They are all that’s left. There are no more allies except for him.

What would Tywin Lannister have done?

She didn’t know.

She did know. Her father never would have found himself in this position. He would have somehow found a way out before getting to this precipice

No. Father would have fallen into the same traps. He would have made the same mistakes. He never would have become king.

Father never would have used wildfire.

No, he wouldn’t. Father would know not to make enemies of his own people.

He had Elia Martell raped and murdered. Her children murdered. Father made plenty of mistakes, and he made plenty of enemies.

Mistakes? He never paid for that crime. It wasn’t a mistake at all. The only crime he ever paid for was not loving that monstrous little imp.

She took a steadying breath that she kept small, contained. She couldn’t let Euron Greyjoy see that she needed it. He was watching her so carefully. It would be a mistake to underestimate him. His peacocking reminded her of an odious version of the preening that Oberyn Martell used to do. Endless amusement and oblivious pleasure hiding the sharp mind behind pretty, gauzy distractions. Euron’s charms were much less charming, but it was easy to see how it might be the same idea. He was plainly investigating her. He wasn’t discomfited by her long pause or her waiting stare. He was amused. She could feel her lip curling in response.

“I ask you again,” she said. “What use are you to me if you no longer have your islands or your fleet?”

“I still have ships,” Euron answered. He started to walk closer, raising one boot to place it on the bottom step of the dais, but The Mountain shifted, his armor creaking, and Euron thought better of it. Cersei finally smiled. Greyjoy didn’t show his fear, but she could smell it on him. There wasn’t a single man who wasn’t afraid of The Mountain. Even Jaime had eyed him each time he came to Cersei’s rooms. She had liked that. The obvious thrill of fear the creature gave him. The way it brought Jaime back into his own eyes for a few moments, before the blankness inevitably came back to enrage her.

I did this to The Mountain, his presence told any man who dared come near her. I could do this to you, too. So behave yourself.

“I have ships as well,” Cersei answered. In truth, not many remained to her, but the crown had seized enough merchant vessels to defend the Blackwater against most naval attacks. If Yara Greyjoy truly was aligned with the dragon queen, there was no telling what kind of coinage had been spent on their fleets and on weapons meant for use against her defenses. Cersei had seen demonstrations of techniques from across the sea before, when Robert was alive. He’d never had much interest in naval warfare, but he loved to watch things being destroyed, like most little boys did. If Yara Greyjoy had that kind of naval power, it might be cause for concern, but Cersei still had wildfire. Tyrion had used it to great effect in a naval battle once. Cersei would do the same.

Besides, it was hard to consider Yara Greyjoy much of a threat. If Cersei knew anything about the men of the Iron Islands, Yara would find herself ruling a band of idiots who wouldn’t want to acknowledge her power. She would have more of a struggle than Cersei did; she would be overthrown within the year, even with the support of the dragon queen. Although perhaps that was an avenue. Kill Euron and send him in a pretty box back to his niece. Offer an alliance. Give those iron cretins a war to fight to distract them from their disdain of anything without a cock. There were stories about Yara’s predilections, and Cersei had tired of men. Perhaps it was a woman she should align herself with next. Why not? She was queen. She could do as she pleased. Perhaps Westeros would be less bothered by a woman consort than one who was her own brother.

Perhaps not. But that was what her Goldcloaks were for, and if she could control the fleet of the Iron Islands…

“You don’t have any ships like mine,” Euron promised. Even eyeballing The Mountain, he was still more confident than any man should be. She rolled her eyes. She’d heard boasts like that before.

Jaime used to boast like that, she thought. Before he lost his hand along with whatever it was that made me want him. He never boasted like that afterward. It was as if his hand had contained every good thing that Jaime possessed, and when it was gone, it took the best parts of him with it.

“So you bring me a few ships, apparently good ships, and think to have loftier ambitions?” she asked. She leaned back against the throne. She’d had the sharper points filed down so they didn’t prick her when she touched the armrests. Men really did look for ways to suffer, didn’t they? To prove themselves. To gain something. They should have tried being born a woman. Then they wouldn’t have to fight in wars or sit in poorly designed thrones to learn about pain. They’d already know suffering. They should try giving birth. Try bleeding and constant cramping. Try being married off to a man who was more interested in whores, and who drunkenly bruised and injured without care for anyone’s wants but his own.

“I didn’t just bring the ships,” Euron said. “I brought you your horn.”

Cersei’s eyebrows rose higher before she could help herself. She heard Qyburn shifting in the seat beside the throne. The last time she spoke to Euron Greyjoy, he had promised her the horn. It can control dragons, he had said. It had sounded like a farce, but he had showed her maps and records. For someone who appeared to take so little seriously, he had done his research. He had hunted for it. Sacrificed for it. He was reluctant to give it to just anybody. She had understood that language: the language of trade. Bargain. She had promised him nearly everything if he could bring it to her. Qyburn had thought the whole thing madness, but he’d been intrigued enough. Her Hand was a curious man. He never allowed things to pass without examining the possibilities of them.

“And you’re certain it will work?” she asked.

“Yes,” Euron replied, smiling. He knew he had trapped her. “My queen.”

Cersei’s lips twisted into an attempted smile that still writhed with disgust. This changed things. If he could control the dragons…

If he could control the dragons, he would take the power of the dragon queen’s army away from her. The dragons would turn on Daenerys. And if he was aligned with Cersei, then Cersei would be the one to control them. She would burn them all to ash, and she would be left the uncontested ruler.

With a loathsome king beside her.

She had done it before. And with Qyburn and The Mountain on her side, she thought that she could do it again. If it meant that the dragons would be hers…

If only it were Jaime who found the horn. He would never betray me. I cannot count on Euron Greyjoy for that.

“We’ll talk more on this soon,” she told Euron. “In the meantime, I hope you and your men are comfortable in the quarters you have been provided.”

It was a courtesy as much as it was a warning to him to have patience, and Euron blessedly understood. He nodded his head into a bow that was almost not insolent.

“Of course,” he said. “Until then, my queen.”

She sneered at him again, and he laughed as he walked away, and she could still hear him chuckling as he left the throne room.

Qyburn stood. He moved in front of her, and he waited for her reaction. He was nearly cringing, the little monster.

Jaime, she thought, would have been furious. He would have demanded that she send Euron away. He would have raged. Said that they could find some other way to win. He would have done anything to make sure that she did not have to marry again.

But Jaime wasn’t with her any longer. Jaime was a prisoner again, far away from her, and yet again he had taken too long to get back. He could not have any say in this.

Wherever he was, surely Jaime was trying everything he could. Surely he was fighting his captors. Trying to escape. Trying to return to her side, where he knew he belonged.

When he did, it would be too late again. She knew that already. She would resist as long as she could, but the horn…it was too important. She needed it. If she was going to stand up against the dragon queen, she needed him. Euron. Jaime. Her father.

No. She didn’t need any of them. She needed what Euron brought to her, but she didn’t need him. She was a queen. She ruled Westeros alone. A woman on the throne. Unmarried. Unshackled. Let the dragon queen return and try to take her city. She would find Cersei Lannister more difficult to displace than Robert Baratheon would have been. No matter what happened next with Daenerys Targaryen, history books would always say that Cersei Lannister was there before her.

Chapter Text

Lady Sansa was tired. Brienne had learned to recognize the signs. It wasn’t always easy, because Sansa was so good at hiding everything. She was especially good at hiding what she considered weaknesses. She always kept her chin up and her back straight, no matter how much her energy waned. She had to; she was a young woman trying to marshal older men who would see a young woman’s every action as weak where their own equal actions were not.

The lords that Sansa spent most of the day meeting with had all been slumped in their seats or yawning insolently by the end of their discussions, but not Sansa. She always kept herself quietly perfect until she had retreated back behind the door of her bedroom. Only then did she allow any signs of her exhaustion to show.

Brienne admired Sansa for many reasons. Sansa wasn’t quite like Lady Catelyn in most respects. She spoke more smoothly. She controlled her emotions where Lady Catelyn had been openly fiery. She had a coolness that Brienne had been assured by the servants was entirely northern. The smallfolk loved their northern princess. She was soft enough and had enough of the south in her to be her mother’s daughter, but hard and strong enough to be her father’s as well. Robb had inherited his mother’s temper and his father’s sense of justice, but for Sansa it was her father’s calm and her mother’s desire to protect her family. The smallfolk loved them both for it, and so did Brienne.

One way in which Sansa and her mother were so alike was this: they trusted Brienne enough to let their exhaustion show in front of her. It had been an honor when it was Lady Catelyn who showed her true, tired face behind everything else, and it was an honor now that it was Sansa who did the same.

With Lady Catelyn, her exhaustion had been awe-inspiring, somehow. She was so busy, trying to get her son to listen to reason, or trying to make an impact with his men, who never wanted to listen to her. She was strong and unbowed and regal, and yet so warm and motherly at once. Her exhaustion was always a surprise when it finally appeared on her face and in her posture. Sansa’s exhaustion just made Brienne worried for her; she wanted Sansa to rest. She wanted Sansa to take a few moments for herself. She hated that Sansa felt like she needed to handle everything herself when there were so many people around her who would take any burden she allowed them.

Ever since Robb had married Daenerys, Sansa had been busier than ever. Daenerys came with an army, and she was seen by many as taking the north’s independence away. A conquering made only a bit prettier by the marriage that started it. Sansa had done her best to make the wedding ceremony as beautiful and obviously chosen as she could, but many of the northern lords had set their hearts on independence. Many of their sons and their men and their families had fought and died for it. Sansa’s gentle reminders that their king would have power and that Daenerys was not going to be another Joffrey Baratheon had not done enough to persuade them. They were willing to share their food stores and their furs and their tradeable goods on the word of Bran Stark and Jon Snow and the yet-unmet threat of the Night King, but they remained steely-cold when it came to trust. Sansa’s unwavering, cool-headed optimism and certainty were necessary. Few men, even the most intractable among them, had been able to withstand the force of her level-headed certainty. 

Robb, too, was doing his best to retain their trust. Brienne had feared that he would lose himself in love the way he was said to have done with the Talisa, but Robb had allowed himself only a single day of being immersed in his new marriage before he joined his sister in the council meetings, adding his voice to hers. He had leveled out significantly since they had last dealt with him as their king. The northern lords remembered the lost, distant young man who returned to them after being declared dead, and they saw how different that man had been from the man who faced them now after moons away at Dragonstone and Highgarden. They heard of his valor in battle and they heard of his strength in the negotiations. Stories began to spread, probably by Varys or Tyrion or perhaps even Davos, who had proven to have a good head for these kinds of things: Daenerys had demanded that Robb bend the knee, and Robb had not. Robb had held out for an offer that would benefit the north.

Together, Sansa and Robb had deftly persuaded the lords to see this marriage as a victory rather than a concession. There were still outliers, and the ones who had reluctantly agreed still needed constant reassurances, but the siblings had accomplished much since they started working together.

Tyrion, too, had not been idle. He had Daenerys performing obvious acts of kindness to the people of Wintertown. It worked on the peasants and the smallfolk, because they cared little why the acts of kindness were being done, only that they had food and furs when before they’d had none. That kind of thing was less likely to endear her to the lords, because what would have worked on the nobility of Kings Landing was considered insulting pandering to the lords in the north. But Robb and Jon and Sansa and Bran and even Lady Arya, when she could be bothered, were all the picture of Stark propriety, and their staid determination to prepare for the battle to come outbalanced the imagined insult of Daenerys and her goodwill towards the peasants. 

Brienne was perhaps biased, but Sansa was the steadiest of all of them. She worked out problems with their grain stores and with their watch schedules and with the clashes between different families and different armies. She worked closely with Missandei, the translator who served Daenerys, to ensure that cultural clashes remained at a minimum. She was patient and only showed her annoyance with the entitlement of her lords and ladies behind closed doors, to Brienne or her siblings or her cousin.

Or to Jaime.

The Lady of Winterfell and the Lion of Casterly Rock were under scrutiny everywhere they went, so of course Sansa made certain to claim him openly as a friend. He had been announced to the council of the lords as her guest, as well as her new sworn sword, and he had been given a room in the castle to cement his place. His reputation as a turncoat was, as he kept reminding everyone, well deserved, but at least he had turned toward them, and most of the lords found it difficult to truly argue against his presence, especially as the Lannister army was well-equipped and loyal to their commander. They bemoaned his lack of honor and his horrible deeds and the fact that he was a Lannister, but Varys and Tyrion had done well in spreading their stories of his good deeds, as well. Brienne had heard more than a few people retelling the tale of her protected virtue and the fact that he gave her a sword to find the Stark girls and restore them to Winterfell. According to a very amused Tyrion, the encampments were filled with minstrels singing a song called Two Swords, an apparently ribald song about Jaime and Brienne herself. She’d been sure her reputation would suffer as a result, but it had only gained her admirers. She may not have believed Jaime about his feelings just yet, but there was no mistaking his grumbling annoyance every time some Free Folk man pointed her out across the courtyard to his friends with a leering grin.

“There are songs about your fight with The Hound, as well,” Tyrion had noted one morning, and Brienne had later seen Sandor Clegane grumbling as he showed some children his missing ear while Arya and Sansa laughed together off to the side.

Though it had been unintentional, Brienne’s continued endorsement of and obvious care for Jaime had made him much more welcomed than he would have been otherwise, but it was Sansa’s friendship that made the true difference. She and Jaime made a point of public conversation. They walked together on the battlements. They strategized together. Sansa included him in all their war planning meetings, where Robb and Jon and The Blackfish and Grey Worm and several Free Folk veterans all pored over maps and tried to figure out the best way to face the army of the dead.

There had been whispers already that the Stark daughter and the Lannister heir would make a good match. Sansa dismissed them handily, and Jaime laughed in the face of anyone who suggested it, but still Brienne heard it discussed often as a possibility.

She knew better than to give any credence to those rumors. It would have been hard to believe them anyway, but she could not ignore the way Sansa smiled at her so pointedly every time she mentioned Jaime, nor the way she conspired with a less-than-perfectly-innocent tone to leave Jaime and Brienne often alone together.

And it wasn’t as if Brienne didn’t appreciate it. She still hardly knew how to feel about Jaime’s constant presence. She was used to missing him, thinking of him fondly, hoping he was faring well. Having him always nearby was a new sensation. Startling somehow every time she saw him. He always found her when it was time to eat. He often seemed to be going for walks when she was on watch outside Sansa’s door. He walked her to her room at night when their shifts were over. He smiled at her. He smiled at her constantly. He always stood just outside her door on those occasions, very correct and polite and never once suggesting anything untoward, though of course his very presence made her think of it. She wondered what it would be like to invite him in, but she never did. She always closed and locked her door with him on the other side of it. She always crawled under her furs and remembered the feel of him pressed against her in the cold. She always dreamed of him.

Night after night on the road, he had nestled closer in sleep. She had always longed to do it when she was awake. They had talked quietly, their heads resting on their packs, very near each other. Their shared heat had warmed the space between them quickly, because there was so little of it to warm. She had always wanted to move closer, but it was always Jaime who had the courage to do it. Brienne had been too much of a coward. Even asleep, she held herself away. But she always woke so much closer. Her hand would be on his hip, or perhaps tucked around his front. One morning she woke and she was brushing her thumb idly over his maimed arm as he held tight to her waist. She had moved away and been out of the tent before he woke. It had shaken her badly.

She longed for it, though. She had never before slept beside someone she loved. So close like that, it was so much. He was so much. To look on, to speak to, to stand beside. Everything about him was clear and bright and new. Like he had been reborn on that battlefield when she thrust her magic sword into his side and nearly killed him. He was no longer that defeated shadow she met at Riverrun. He was free.

He is free, and he says that he loves you.

He hadn’t spoken the words since they returned to Winterfell, but she didn’t need the words to see it when he looked at her. She understood what lingered in those silences. She understood, too, why he didn’t say them aloud. She had rejected them. She had disbelieved them. She still did. He wanted to love her. He thought it was right for his new, reborn self to love her. The handsome knight falling for the hideous beast of a woman who had shown him what true honor was. It was something out of a tale, and Jaime told her before that he had always loved tales of honor as a boy. He was a beautiful warrior who had chosen to leave behind the poisonous allure of his warped love for his sister and had found something simpler, something more pure, with a woman who held his honor in such high esteem. That was all it was. It wasn’t nothing, but it also wasn’t enough.

Jaime longed to be a better man, and perhaps he thought that a better man would love a kinder woman than Cersei. A woman filled with foolish belief in the goodness of people who wanted the world to think they weren’t. She was Jaime’s biggest supporter, and his only true friend, by his own admission. Why shouldn’t he love her? He probably thought she was a good choice of someone to love, but he had said it himself, hadn’t he? Love wasn’t a choice. He couldn’t force himself to love her. He couldn’t talk himself into it. He would tire of her eventually. He would go back to his sister. He always had. Why should this be any different?

The way he had looked at her on that battlefield.

The way he had looked at her at Riverrun.

He loves you. He loves you, and you don’t believe him.

She would have to be mad to believe him.

Sansa gestured Brienne in. She closed the door. Her mask crumbled into tiredness. She was rubbing at the small of her back and sighing. 

“I can’t believe I used to want to be queen,” she mused as she sat beside the fire and pulled some sewing into her lap. To Brienne, that seemed like more unpleasant work, but she knew that Sansa always found peace in it. She often sewed garments before bed. It was necessary for the war effort, because they still didn’t have nearly enough, but Sansa liked it, too. It brought her relief the way that it brought Brienne relief to spar with Podrick or work at drills in the yard with Jaime. Brienne sat in the chair beside Sansa’s, the way she often did at the end of the night like this. She unbuckled her sword and leaned it against the arm of her seat. Sansa looked at it, and Brienne knew that she was going to speak. She braced herself for it. Sansa’s words were often difficult to predict, but not this time. “Ser Jaime,” Sansa said. “Told me about your sword. How he gave it to you. How he found it fitting for my father’s sword to protect me.”

Brienne nodded. She didn’t want to say anything else, but Sansa was looking at her in anticipation, and so she managed to say, “yes, my lady.”