Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jaime scrubs the frost from his beard again. All it does is make his hand colder, but the movement distracts him from the sky—every once in a while it does this, lightens up and shifts deep blue, and every time Jaime wonders if the nightmare is over. 

Brienne is over by the cave where he left her. She stares resolutely at the snow piled in drifts by the cave’s mouth. Last time this happened she’d stared up, enraptured. Had even managed a tremulous, hopeful smile. This time she won’t even get to her feet. Jaime frowns and looks back at the sky. 

“Still blue,” he informs her. “Perhaps fewer stars? Come take—“ 

“I’ll prepare our fire,” she says suddenly. On thick legs she stands and stomps over to a stubby tree that goes up to her waist. She kicks it over and drags it to her spot by the cave, pulling flint from her pack and kneeling in the snow. 

“Come inside before I light it,” she tells him.

Jaime swallows. “But the sky.” 

She shakes her head and beckons him over. “Come inside, Jaime,” she says gently. “The sun isn’t coming out.”

He looks back up. It’s darker than dusk—the blue of a deep pool of water or the edge of an iris. It’s still full of stars. 

“Light the fire.” He walks to her, brushes by and lets the cave swallow him. “You take the first watch.”

-

They leave the cave after three rounds of watch, better rested than they were before and in need of more food. Jaime leads them to the shores of a river that must have raged once. Before the Night. Its banks are peppered with fleshy mushrooms, and when Jaime cracks the river’s surface with the blunt force of his pike, the water below is churning with fish. 

“It’s not supposed to be this way,” he snarls suddenly, rounding on Brienne. Her eyes go wide in the moonlight. 

“How is it supposed to be?” 

“Desolate and unsurvivable. Hopeless.” He gets to his knees and plunges his arm in the water, clenching his teeth as the cold sinks into his bones. “Like the stories said.”

With his trembling hand he shoves one fish, and then another, into Brienne’s arms. She places them on the snow behind her, then peels a layer of her furs off to reveal a thin pelt beneath. She wears it draped over her shoulders and takes it off delicately, holding it out for him.

“Your hand,” she says simply, and Jaime can feel his face twisting up, ugly and furious, but he holds his cold hand out, if only to spare his remaining fingers. She wraps him up tenderly and then turns to gather the fish, setting off up the river’s bank and retreating into a copse of snow-dusted trees where they’ll be sheltered from the wind. 

“You can sleep,” she says when he reaches her, “if you would like.” 

“All I’ve done is sleep.”

“Then I will.” She curls up at the base of a tree, and Jaime settles himself in front of her. 

There is nothing to do but wait for her to wake. There are no noises from the trees or beyond. There is no sun to track across the sky. He itches, somewhere deep inside, for the thrill of battle. 

From his pocket he retrieves a flat piece of wood. He uses his thumbnail to press another mark into it, where it stands among more than a hundred others, all lined up like soldiers in war. 

Another day, he thinks, and still we live in darkness. 

-

He marks the wood thrice more, and on the fourth day the sky goes blue again. 

“Brienne,” he says, halting in his steps, but she plods on. 

“We’re almost to the cave.” She looks back and urges, “you can watch from there.” 

“I can watch from anywhere, and I want to watch from here.”

She sets her jaw. “Out in the open?”

“Nowhere is safe.” Jaime throws his hands up, tension radiating up his back. He wants to yell—he wants to fight, he wants for there to be some point to him. He wants an excuse to stop thinking. “Look up, gods damn you. Look up.” 

Brienne turns away from him, and Jaime is about to grab her about the shoulders and knock her chin, but a shadow congeals in the darkness and suddenly his blade is drawn. He and Brienne fall into step together. 

Before them, a seething ice bear paws at the snow. It huffs and lurches toward them. Brienne swings at it, and Oathkeeper lodges itself in the bear’s shoulder. Roaring and spitting furiously, the bear presses forward. Brienne scrambles back, and Jaime steps in front of her, aiming for the bear’s jugular, slicing a deep, clean line into its throat. It raises its paw to bat him away, but Jaime is quicker—he has always been quicker, and he drops his sword as he dances away, pulling his pike from his belt, and he bashes the back of the bear’s head in until it stumbles and collapses in a pile of twitching flesh.

Jaime sucks in a deep, cold breath. Brienne twists and fumbles in her pack for her flint, and then the bear is covered in flames, churning smoke into the night air. 

She shoves past Jaime. He stumbles for a second before gaining his footing and yelling at her broad back, “Come, my lady. Let’s warm our noses before the fire.” 

“No,” she says. “It smells like flesh.”

“Flesh is for the living,” Jaime counters. “It’s just you, me, and the fish in the river now.” 

But she ignores him, and the farther away she gets the tighter Jaime’s chest becomes. Ultimately, he follows, matching his steps to hers and fitting his feet into the impressions she left in the snow. 

When he comes upon the cave, the pressure in his chest lessens. Nonetheless he sneers at it—the pile of ashes by its mouth, the rock where he watches the sky, the pile of snow that melts and ices over and melts again, where he slips whenever he leaves to take a piss. 

Brienne is in the cave already. His eyes, well-adjusted to darkness, can make out the shape of her in her corner. 

“Hungry?” He asks gruffly. 

“Not at all.” 

What dream is this? Jaime wonders. If this is hell, how are they not hungry? But his pack is full of mushrooms, and he feels as strong as ever. 

Angrily, he says, “If Westeros had fallen to an indomitable foe, I would have died in battle and bled happily.”

He hears Brienne shuffle. Maybe it’s a nod. “Westeros defeated itself,” she agrees. 

“And now I sleep well every night,” he continues quietly, “with only you by my side.”

Brienne says nothing. Jaime thinks he hears her sniff, but then she tells him, “If you want, go watch the sky.” 

He hesitates. Turning, he peers out of the cave and up at the blue. Brienne is moving around, arranging her furs to tuck herself in and stay warm. Jaime’s chest tightens again. He steps out of the cave. 

-

When the two of them are awake again they spar in the snow. Jaime lands a brutal hit to Brienne’s left shoulder and she spends an hour grimacing before he manages to pull her down beside him and yank her furs aside. He pushes her back to press her bare shoulder into the snow. 

While she hisses, Jaime confesses, “I dreamed of this.”

She blinks up at him. Her lips part, and Jaime has to tear his eyes away to meet her gaze. “Dreamed of what?” She asks.

“Of this cave. Of you.” 

Brienne doesn’t answer. Her eyes fall to his throat, where his pulse ticks quickly. This close, the scent of her fills his nose. Salt and smoke and musk and cream. He tips toward her and then jerks away. 

“I thought I was dreaming of my death,” he explains. “Only it refuses to come.”

A strange expression flickers across Brienne’s face. He watches her closely but she tucks it away, lifting her chin and rising up to push him away. She straightens her furs with gloved fingers. Her flaxen hair falls into her face and she pushes it away messily. Jaime tracks every movement. 

“I see,” she says. He is certain she doesn’t, but she is already on her feet. His hand forms a fist at his side, and he breathes deeply before the wind blows the scent of her away. 

Will she ever touch me? The thought strikes him like a blow. He stares at the ground dumbly, wondering at it, and then turns his eyes to the long line of her back, to her pale neck, to her broad hips. Heat unfurls in his stomach. When she glances back at him, he is already looking. 

“I—“ she pauses, eyeing him nervously, then continues, “I can take the first watch.”

Jaime rises to his feet. They stare at each other across the snow. The mouth of their cave gapes between them. 

“Not yet,” he says. “I’ll clean my pike.” 

“…All right.”

“Excellent.” He wipes a hand down his face irritably and goes to fetch it.

When the pike is clean and he settles down to sleep, he marks another notch in his wood and counts them all up. 

-

The following day is dark. There are no stars, and there is no moon. Brienne wanders about morosely, ignoring Jaime’s jabs, and in lieu of pestering her or sparring with her or seeking out Others to kill, he sits around and eats far too much fish and tries to ignore the way the shape of Brienne in the dark makes his breeches tighten beneath layers of fur and pelt. 

“Light the fire,” he demands hours later.

“Not yet,” says Brienne, but Jaime is losing his mind imagining her mouth, and he wants to see it. 

“Fine,” he spits, “I’ll do it myself.”

Finally, she glares at him across the dimly lit cave, and her sullen face is visible to him. The wide set of her freckled jaw casts a shadow along her neck. 

“One hundred and fifty days today,” he tells her, taking off his frosted outer layer of fur and hanging it over a jutting rock above him. “I counted.” 

She closes her eyes. “So long.”

He shrugs and sits. “Not as long as a war or a journey across the sea. Even a child needs longer to learn how to speak.” 

“It feels long to me,” says Brienne. 

“I feel as though I blinked,” Jaime admits, “and all at once everything was different.”

“Jaime—“

A frigid stream of water drips down Jaime’s nose, down his chin and neck and into his furs. He flinches, surprised by the cold against his chest, and looks up accusingly at his hung coat. Another stream drips down. Cursing, he stands and peels away a few pelts, exposing his chest to the air. 

“Jaime,” Brienne says loudly. Her voice echoes in the cave. “I must apologize to you.”

His head snaps up to look at her. “Apologize?” He laughs. “Whatever for?”

She nods, then stares at her hands, all twisted in her coat. Miserably, she says, “I should have begged the Starks to let you stay. We should never have left—“

Jaime furrows his brow. “They were under no obligation to offer me refuge. It was a mercy to let me walk. You’re the fool—leaving with me.”

She shakes her head insistently. “No. That was a simple choice—hardly a choice at all. But for you—“

“I made my choices,” Jaime says firmly. 

“Yes, but—“

He waves her aside. She is so full of honor it makes him sick. It makes him dream. “What are you apologizing for? My limited options at the end of the world?” He scoffs. “I should thank you, if anything, but I won’t. Because I’m cold and pale and haven’t been kissed in years.” 

Her face crumples, and in the firelight she is more morose than he has seen her in a very long time. Hoarsely, she says, “I only wish I were…Jaime, I am sorry you are unhappy.” 

Stunned, Jaime stares at her.

His chest tightens again, the way it only does when Brienne is hurt or sweet or far away from him. Now it feels as if she is all three—her mouth is curled into an ugly frown, and surely she must care for him if his unhappiness pains her so, but still she is hurting for nothing. Jaime is not unhappy at all.

He makes his way slowly around the fire. 

“You needn’t apologize for that,” he warns. She avoids his eyes and shakes her head. 

“I must. I make a poor companion.” 

“Brienne.” He stops in front of her, blocking her from the fire and casting them both in shadow. 

“It’s true,” she insists. 

“It is not.”

“I see—“

“See what?”

She huffs frustratedly and looks up at him. Her eyes blaze. ”This,” she gestures around at their cave, “is more than I could have dreamed. But you. You are Jaime Lannister—you are meant for more than this.”

“Surely you could have dreamed of more than a life with a man like me.” 

Brienne opens her mouth and closes it. She stares up at him, eyes wide and afraid, and then breathes deep and shakes her head no. “I couldn’t have,” she says simply. 

Jaime’s heart trips in his chest. She is suddenly too far from him, so he drops to his knees before her. His back is hot from the fire, and he leans in to her. 

“Brienne?” He asks. 

“I know. How could I possibly—“

“Will you ever touch me?” 

“What?” She blanches. “You—“

“We sleep too much,” he continues, “and we eat so well. There are other ways to pass the time. I could show you.”

She stares aghast. “Have you heard nothing I’ve said?” 

“You believe I’m unhappy.” He wraps his hand around her thigh and she twitches, her own hand coming up to cover his. She stares at their hands as if deciding whether to hold him there or tear him away. “Brienne. I am not unhappy.” 

Her fingers tighten, and he pushes their hands closer to her center. Shakily, she says, “But…”

Jaime bends forward to catch her lips with his own. She gasps under his mouth and stands quickly, turning away from him. 

“You are unhappy,” she tells him, as if reciting a list. “You wish you’d died, you wish the sun would return, you wish the stories had been true and everything was different.” 

He stands, too, and presses his hand into her hip. “I wouldn’t mind some sunshine. Everything else I can manage.”

“You can manage…”

“Is it such a surprise? A horrible man has found his place in a horrible world. I keep waiting to be pinched, to wake up in a cage in the mud.”

Brienne says nothing. She stares blankly at the cave wall. 

“Well?” Jaime asks. “May I touch you?”

Her breath catches. “You’re right,” she says faintly, “We must be dreaming.”

Smiling, Jaime leans over her, forearm braced against the cave wall and left hand gripping her hip. Her neck is warm from the fire and he lowers his mouth to it. The skin feels hot to his tongue. She shudders. Daringly, he cants his hips forward to settle between her thighs. She gasps, and he pulls away before pressing forward again helplessly. 

All at once he feels drunk and shaky, and when she arches tentatively into him, neck and hips pressing closer, he relaxes his weight and dares to rub himself against her. With less and less hesitation, she relaxes her hips more firmly into his own. Jaime’s mind slips away as heat crashes through his body. I don’t need the sun to do this, he thinks. He could move like this forever. A pleasurable eternity. 

“Brienne,” he grunts. “May I touch you?”

Her head tips forward, and then quietly, she whispers, “yes.”

He pulls away to fumble at her drawstrings and peel them down and away. Bent over the stone, all of her is presented to him at once, a tight swirl and then lower, the puffy pink slit of her shining amidst damp and wiry hair. It has been so long—Jaime has to close his eyes to collect himself. With stiff fingers he works at his own laces and sucks in a deep breath at the feeling of cool air on his hips.

She glances back and her eyes go wide. He likes the way she looks at him, like she can’t believe he’d bare himself to her. He almost can’t believe it himself. His cock hangs hard and swollen above his open breeches, bobbing indecently as he drags himself closer to her. They gasp together when he slides it between her slippery cleft. 

Jaime punches out a breath. “Gods.” 

“Jaime,” says Brienne. Her voice is soft and unsure. He doesn’t like that. Surely she knows—surely she can feel—

He slips an inch inside her and something stutters to life inside him. She pushes back, and he meets her halfway. Together they thrust and slide and work up a hot, slick knot of pleasure that pulses between them. 

“Do you like it?”Jaime asks. His voice comes out lower and scratchier than he’d meant it to, and when Brienne says, “yes,” she sounds surprised and more aroused than he’d expected her to. 

“We can do it whenever you want. Whenever.”

Gods, he’s missed this. Fucking. Although the word feels crass compared to the tender spot in his chest that makes him snarl. Words are meaningless in comparison. Why would he need the sun when Brienne of Tarth is bent over in the cave he once dreamt of, gasping out these sweet little breaths, the sturdy mass of her meeting him thrust-for-thrust? 

He groans and shifts his weight, bringing his left hand to the small of her back. His fingers splay along the freckled skin. His body is reduced to the heat coiling in his lower back. He moves instinctually, but his mind is caught on his hand, on the place where he touches her.

This is Brienne, he thinks inanely, even as he moves inside her. This is Brienne. This is not a dream.

“What?” 

Jaime blinks, and he realizes he’s been whispering her name over and over in time with his hips. I am sorry you are unhappy, her voice echoes in his mind. 

“You stupid foolish girl,” he breathes, “apologizing for this life. This life where I fight and fuck and everyone has forgotten my name. Where an honorable, stubborn woman has decided I’m a worthy companion.” 

Every muscle in him awakens. His blood, gone cold, runs hot again. He is fierce, he is a lion, and life is worth living. He is Jaime Lannister. 

“I am closer to happiness than I’ve ever been,” he confesses, lost to his pleasure. “ What does that say about me? That in horror I’ve found peace?” He rocks into her especially hard and leans over to run his mouth along her neck, panting into her nape, breathing into the humid space, and then he asks, “what does it say about you?” 

Brienne trembles beneath him and she goes all tight and slippery around him. He should reach his hand around to rub at her but he can’t seem to stop talking—

“My darling, it’s because of you.” He pulls out, pushes in, pulls out— 

“Jaime.”

“We’ll stay here,” he says nonsensically. “We’ll stay and do this. Have you ever been anyone’s darling?” 

“Jaime.” 

He drops his head to the top of her spine. “I’ve never been anyone’s Jaime,” he says, voice hoarse. It’s like he’s in the bath again, a place from another world, and the words come from nowhere, even though they’ve sat inside him for a lifetime. “I’ve been a prisoner, an oathbreaker, and a pitiful excuse for a son and a brother. But I’ve never been Jaime. I always wanted to be.”

Brienne shoves back so hard he’s knocked back a step. He slips from her and she’s turning around, flushed and ungainly. There is a scar along her ribcage that shines like a pearl. She pushes at his shoulders and goes down on the stone floor. Her thick muscles shift as she gets herself on top of him, and of course—of course she would like it this way, chest to chest, where she can hide and stay close at the same time.

She tucks her head into his neck, and his arms come up to hold her. 

She says nothing, but he feels it— my Jaime, her hands say, sweeping up his back. My Jaime, says her chin, digging into his shoulder. 

Gently, he eases himself back inside of her. She trembles and is slow to let herself go, so he tells her, “This is just another fight, my darling. One we both win.” 

He kneads her knobby hipbone with his hand and slips his other wrist down to her lower stomach, pressing against it and urging her to move. She gasps and they writhe again, on and on until they break. 

-

Jaime digs his thumbnail into his little piece of wood. 

“How many days?” Asks Brienne. She wipes his pike in the snow, cleaning the bloody point. 

“I haven’t counted in a while.” 

“Why not?”

He shrugs. “I figured it out.”

She glances up, confused. He points at the sky. “It lightens every fourth day. It’s a pattern, nothing more.”

Brienne sits back on her haunches. “You can’t know that for sure.”

“No,” he agrees. She goes back to his pike. 

“When did it lighten last?” She asks when she’s finished. 

He looks at the wood. “Three days ago.”

Brienne stands and dusts the snow from her knees. “We’ll watch tonight then.”

Raising a brow, Jaime says, “Oh? No sudden urge to build a fire?”

“I’ve decided not to care what it means. It makes no difference either way.” She steps closer and slips his pike back into his belt. Jaime breathes deeply. 

“Are you hungry?” She asks. 

Jaime grins and wraps his arm around her waist. “Not for fish.”