Chapter Text
Brienne knew that if she prayed to the Seven, her prayers would be answered. They always had been.
She had told Renly that, once, when he had idly wondered what else he might do to turn his brother’s heart and turn the tide of battle. He had not really been asking her. He had been asking the empty air of his tent. She was no more than an ornamental suit of armor to him in that moment. She had answered nonetheless. “Pray,” she had said, and looked sidelong to see his beautiful face twist.
“Has it done you any good, Beauty?” he’d scoffed. It was the only time he had used the nickname.
Brienne could not deny that the Seven did not give you what you asked for. They had not stopped her growth when she threatened to overtop her father; they had not cleared the freckles from her skin; they had not made her nose set straight the first time it was broken, nor any of the other times after that. They had not given her a golden tongue, and they had not sent her a dressmaker who understood that the muscles around her back could not simply be confined with creaking corsetry. They had not made her a lady.
They had sent her something better, purer: they had sent her a knight’s soul and a body to do a knight’s work, and had sent her Renly to remind her that not all men were cruel, and had sent her victory in the melee at Bitterbridge so that she might not ever have to leave him. Even when Renly had been killed, they had sent her Catelyn Stark to teach her that women might have honor also, and Sansa Stark to teach her that society was not composed purely of knights and ladies but of people with both natures mixed, and Arya Stark to teach her that she was not the only woman who fought with swords. And they had sent her Jaime Lannister.
It was with reference to Jaime Lannister that she prayed now. He had taught her to give up asking for any particular thing, had taught her that it was impossible to impose one’s will on the gods. So her prayer was contentless. She did not even specify which of the Seven she prayed to. Her only icon was a prism and the rainbow it created.
She could not specify which of the Seven she prayed to, for she had put herself outside any one of their purviews. A knight she was, and pledged to the Warrior; unmarried, and the rightful province of the Maiden; yet she had missed her courses and she knew certainly and surely that she would soon catch the Mother’s particular interest.
Jaime should have dreamed of pressure, of the weight of the Red Keep pushing the air from his lungs, of the weight of his choices crushing him into pulp, like a sack of grapes crushed into wine. He should have dreamed of his wasted muscles pressed flat, his bones broken and ground into dust, his precious Lannister blood streaming from his nose and mouth. He should have dreamed of Cersei pressed and ground and mixed with him, one flesh, finally—themselves and their child, all turned into nothing but meat, and entombed beneath a pile of rock, with the damned Iron Throne melted down with dragonfire to crown the lot.
Jaime did not dream of pressure. He experienced only blackness. For once he was free. He was not even himself. He answered to no one for his choices, his passions, his circumstances. It was bliss.
Then, unfortunately, he woke up.
“Sire,” Brienne said, “I regret that I cannot accept the honor. You shall have to find another Lord Commander for your Kingsguard. —Lady Commander.”
“Then you’ll stay with me in the North,” Sansa said—Queen Sansa. “I know you miss Tarth, but I’m glad.”
King Bran the Broken’s eyes always seemed to be staring into the distance, seeing things far away; but today, here, in the only room of the Red Keep that had escaped utter destruction, he seemed especially abstracted. “No, Sansa,” he said, “because of the babe,” as though he were merely alluding to a simple and well-known fact.
Sansa could not stifle her indrawn breath. Brienne did not need to look up from where she knelt to imagine her sworn lady’s shocked face.
“Because of the babe,” Brienne replied, her voice low and as steady as she could make it.
“The oath says that members of the Kingsguard will father no children,” Bran observed. “It says nothing about mothering.”
“The letter of the law,” Brienne said, her eyes still carefully cast down, “not the spirit.”
“And you will not drink moon tea?” Sansa asked. Brienne did look up at that. In her own way Sansa could be as abstracted as Bran, as cold and calculating as Littlefinger had been, as pitiless as Daenerys Targaryen. Sansa would counsel her to drink the tea, if Brienne asked for advice.
“No, my lady.”
“She wouldn’t,” Bran said, “for the child might be the last thing she has of Jaime Lannister.”
Brienne felt her face turn red. She could not work out whether it was with anger or embarrassment or both. She had never been good at examining her feelings, even when they were simple feelings. She was grateful that there was no-one present but Bran and Sansa, but it was too much to even share this with them, her sworn lady and her King.
Bran did not care how she felt. He cared only what she would do. “He will survive his wounds, you know.”
“You can see the future, then?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
“What will you do with him?”
“What you want me to do.”
“If you won’t drink moon tea, the child must have a name,” Sansa said, obviously wishing to discuss anything but Jaime Lannister’s fate. “Gendry’s your liege-lord in the Stormlands; he’ll ratify the babe a Tarth, and make it your heir.”
“That won’t serve,” Bran said. “There must be an heir to Casterly Rock.”
“Tyrion,” Sansa shot back.
“My Hand will be busy in the Crownlands.”
“Janei Lannister.”
“A young girl, to be married to whom?”
“You said the Kingslayer would live,” Brienne interrupted. “Surely he is the heir.”
“I said he would survive his wounds,” Bran told her, face as placid as ever. “I know not whether he will live. He may put an end to himself. He tried to save his sister. He failed.”
It felt as though someone had cracked an egg on Brienne’s head: a short sharp shock, a crunch, and then the slimy feeling of truth, the disgusting truth. Until the moment that her illusions were ripped away, she had not known that she had been cherishing other possibilities—that he had gone to put a dagger in Cersei’s heart, that he had gone to right the wrongs he had made.
But Jaime would never do that. Jaime might betray Cersei, the other half of his soul, but he would never leave her for long. In his own twisted way he was a truer knight than any.
Tears pricked at Brienne’s eyes. The misery enveloped her. Something deep inside her chest tightened and tightened, iron bands around her heart. As though from a long way away, she heard her own voice saying, “He failed, and Cersei is dead, along with the babe she carried. I am alive, and our child with me. He will do as I bid.” It was a hateful statement. But she did hate him, a little, for being so noble and so devoted to someone else. For choosing his past over his future. She did not know what else she felt. She felt so much.
“You would compel him to marry you?” Sansa asked.
“I would, my lady,” Brienne said.
“I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Brienne stood, feeling the subtle changes in her body: the babe was barely a reality and yet it had already altered her balance, her whole way of being in the world. “I didn’t, before,” she said. “Now I do.”
The room in which the Silent Sisters tended Jaime was whitewashed and, as far as he could see, utterly barren. He could not see much of it because he could not move much. It was not clear if he would someday get up from his bed, or if he would be like Brandon Stark in his chair. It is hard to predict such things when someone’s arms and legs and feet are all broken in multiple places.
At first he thought that perhaps he was dead, that the pain in his body and the stillness of the room and the veiled sisters were all part of the torments that septons say are visited upon the souls of the evil. It seemed reasonable that the Silent Sisters, who prepared the dead for the world to come, would be the castellans of the afterlife. It hurt even to breathe; he had suffered broken ribs before but never such a piercing, unremitting pleurisy. He thought that perhaps a rib had pierced a lung, and that he would one day cough up infection and die. They would not give him milk of the poppy for fear that he would fall into coma once more.
He realized slowly that if he thought he would die, he could not be dead already.
Then his brother Tyrion came to see him. Tyrion could not be dead: Tyrion would outlive them all. A dragon could breathe fire on Tyrion, and he would come up with some miraculous way to shield himself, and then offer a witty comeback. The dragon would eat Tyrion, and then vomit him back up as indigestible.
“You truly fucked yourself,” the little shit said.
Jaime groaned.
“You ought to have had the courtesy to die,” he said.
“I wish I had,” Jaime tried to reply. His voice creaked with disuse and the words came out slurred. He had lost teeth. A brick had fallen on his face. Probably a hundred bricks had fallen on his face.
“Everyone wishes you had, with the possible exception of me,” Tyrion said. Jaime could not see any part of Tyrion but the top of his golden head from where he lay—the bed was too high. His brother sounded extraordinarily harried. “You present problems on multiple fronts.”
“Kill me then,” Jaime mumbled.
“And add fratricide to my list of sins? No, thank you. Besides, I have no desire to fight the Maid of Tarth.”
Jaime closed his eyes and willed the blackness to come back and erase him. He was absolutely not dead. He was something very much worse. He was alive, and he would have to answer for his actions.
“She wants to kill me so much,” he said. It was not a question.
“She does not know what she wants,” Tyrion said, “but she knows she’s with child, and may the Stranger fuck me with a bull’s cock if the brat’s anyone’s but yours.”
Jaime did not open his eyes. “Cersei?”
“Dead. Her head split open like a melon.”
“Bad luck.”
“I think it’s good luck, actually.” Jaime refused to open his eyes, but he knew that Tyrion was bouncing on the balls of his feet in that annoying way he had whenever he thought that you were being tiresomely thick. “Father always wanted an heir for Casterly Rock. We’ve given him everything he dreamed of. Too bad he’s dead and can’t see it.”
“The babe’s a Snow,” Jaime said.
“It would be a Storm, as a matter of fact. But it won’t be, because you are alive, and you will marry her. After that you may do with yourself what you see fit. For my sake, brother, make it very clear that it’s suicide. I don’t want to be a fratricide, and I don’t want to be accused of being one, either.”
Tyrion waited for a moment. When Jaime said nothing, he offered, “Daenerys Targaryen is dead. Jon Snow has taken the black. Brandon Stark is our king. They call him Bran the Broken. So you see, the imps and the bastards and the broken things won in the end.”
Tyrion went away. The Silent Sisters came. They were so much a part of the scenery that Jaime did not feel embarrassed to cry in front of them.