#I did not explore Soulmate aspect enough but Ooops

[scoundrels-in-love]

The Chariot, pretty please?

I could never say no to you, even without pretty please.

Additionally, there’s Easter Egg (certain House words and what they allude to) in this fic, courtesy of @slipsthrufingers and her The Tides which you should definitely go and read. She also technically spawned this AU, so there’s that. Also a thank you goes to  @aliveanddrunkonsunlight for one of the scenes.

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The Chariot: victory, animals, awareness, arrows, aggression

Fortunes from Arranged Marriage/Enemies to Lovers/Soulmate AU I will probably never write in full. Except I guess I sort of did? Also on AO3.

Victory

Their marriage is a war of subtler kind.

Not quite as covert as games played at court, for they meet in the yard almost daily to take up swords and leave bruises as tally marks on each other, but on this battlefield, most bleeding is done from one’s soul.

Jaime prides himself in doing so rarely, collects each glare and sneer, every time blankness frosts over her face to hide the hurt, wraps them up in bundles of victory with the red of her angry, splotchy blush. Stockpiles them in neat rows within the room he has made just for his hatred of this union - and the self-righteous wife of his, too.

But somewhere along the way, between all the fighting they do back to back (even when they are miles apart) out of sheer necessity, among truths that pour out of him like bad blood and leave him drained but almost healing, his goals gradually change.

He begins to yearn for another nod of approval, a glance that’s not seeped in disdain like bitterest tea known to man, for corners of her large mouth to not turn down as deeply and so often. A smile is earned through an entire campaign.

But the ground he tries to advance on is littered with rocks he threw at her. The gold chain of his old victories wraps around his throat, slowly chokes out the life of tender shoots of something else that tries to sprout between the two of them. And sometimes he goes back to old cruelties because it’s familiar, if uncomfortable armor against impossibilities. Changing the direction of rivers in her heart seems too monumental a task even for him.

(Yet he tries, tongue tripping over the insult he said yesterday painting her gaze just a little colder than three days before.)

Aggression

At first, she sleeps with her sword close, listening for any noise on the other side of door that separates their chambers. Just because she intends to honor the vows and alliance hatched from them, vulnerable and trembling like any other newborn, does not mean Kingslayer will. What is one more oath cut by a sword in vulnerable back of someone you’re meant to protect? Aggression simmers in air between them both, as intangible as heatwave and as sturdy as fortress of dislike they’ve build for each other.

But their personal enemies become their common ones, then some they earn jointly and at one point, she realizes they only fight together these days. There is almost (not almost, there is) safety in it and definitely trust - which she doesn’t know when she surrendered, but she can only hope it will never get thrown bloody and battered in her face. With each passing month, it grows a little sturdier, able to weather even stronger storms of doubts.

Sometimes he even shoulders his way into battles that are only her own - when someone japes about her looks, he incinerates them with a word or two (and there is that story of a golden punch she’s yet to confirm with him).  When men sneer at her Brienne of the Rock as if she’s become part of it, part of Westerlands. Part of his family. Jaime corrects them, reminds that she’s of Tarth and she wishes there wouldn’t be a pang of something unnameable (but frightfully alike hurt). But why would he not, if it isn’t one of the few things she brought to this union?

On those evening, she beats the training dummy with more vigor than usually.

Animals

When Jaime was a child, he thought the Houses with beasts in their sigils were certainly the most impressive. He didn’t loathe the Lion of Lannisters yet, hadn’t grown into the image either. And what is a wheat field to dragon? It had seemed to him as if some Houses wanted to announce they were lesser.

After meeting Brienne, he decides Tarth sigil is as unsightly as its only heir. It is childish, especially considering how he holds no love for lions anymore, but truly, Tarth is trying too hard, with the suns and crescents on the rose and blue reminiscent of dawn. Which makes sense with their House words, too - First Light in the Dark, they promise to be.

When he jokes about it, his wife explains that it stands for the lighthouse Evenstars have maintained for centuries in a tone that would make a lesser man feel chastised. It’s one of the first times she speaks more than a sentence to him, even if it is dripping in restrained disdain even more than the rest. And somehow, he keeps thinking back to her House words from time to time.

Perhaps because he starts to see the light of the line, ironically. Her face is the first he can discern when he comes to after losing his hand, and her pale head bobs above the murky waters of fever and pain, leading him onward. Her honor and righteous nature makes the dishonor surrounding him feel even darker, yet gives him just enough light, direction to chase it like Galleythat guides to west. He cannot even blame their soulmarks for this (like he blames it for the restless pattern of his heart around her these days), it is merely who she is, and he isn’t only one led by her.

Jaime’s opinion changes on other matters, too - he had thought what is wheat field to dragon, but what is a wolf or a lion to the sun or the moon? Even a dragon pales into comparison. He has seen skulls of those, in the depths of Red Keep, but the sun shines on him still as it shone on the beast’s hide.

The sigil, he decides in the end, is as magnificent as Brienne and sometimes, he dreams of a lion-gold painted child who bears it. Another late and unforeseen side-effect of their soulmate bond, surely. (That fills him with such soft longing he wonders if she’d taste it on his lips, should she kiss him.)

Awareness

Through the first months of marriage, Brienne is more aware of her body than she has ever been in her life. Particularly when she is around Jaime Lannister. Every inch of skin seems to be prickling with reminder its stretched over limbs that are too long, blood pumps hot with anger through her body that’s too tall and too broad and her face often burns with blushes, highlighting her ugly features which cannot hide her emotions.

He greatly delights in pointing all of it out, if not with words as sleek as a blade, then with a twist of his mouth or cocked eyebrow. She wants nothing more than to remind him this mannish body might not be made for songs of love (something she’s come to terms with, Brienne insists in the dead of night as she lays awake in her bed, married but barely kissed), but it’s perfectly fine for a warrior.

And then she does. Brienne doesn’t win the bout, but what she gains instead is reclamation of her comfort in her husband’s presence. Maybe because the next time she sees Jaime, she knows of bruise she rightfully placed on his shoulder or because something shifts between them - their marriage is still a raging storm they weather separately, but the wind is angled just a little from the side now. (She hates the thought Jaime’s attitude might control such a force of nature.)

Much later, the awareness comes back, but with the flavor of heady, sweet wine that sends ghost of dizziness through her, a lot like his proximity does now. Part of her doesn’t even think of her ugliness, would believe that heat of his shoulder almost burns hers when they sit too close. The sane half of her laughs at her, in a voice that sounds just like her lord husband’s. She isn’t sure which makes her think of her soulmark more, not in the betrayed anger of initial discovery, but wistful sort of resignation.

Brienne wishes she could be angry still.

Arrows

Jaime is not fond of archery - he is not terrible at it, but nothing about it entices him to train enough to excel. He prefers the straightforward honesty of a sword, face to face with your opponent. He knows Brienne does, too, long before he even meets her.

So, he thinks it is ironic that arrow may be the thing that takes her away from him, even before she is his. (But he has been hers for ages, she just doesn’t know. He didn’t. Now she never may.)

It’s just a rumor, a throwaway line about one of generals being perhaps mortally wounded by archer. He should be concerned, of course, because any such loss is a complication they don’t need, but there is no other name that comes to him, only Brienne Brienne Brienne in a damning chant, as if he had entered mourning already. No, they would tell him if his wife was dying, if she had perished already. But no raven has come yet and his night is haunted by thought of her dying alone, dying.

So the very next morning, he rides out, duties be damned. In fact, he is merely picking different oath to honor now, the one he said in the Sept truly a lifetime ago. The man that stood there perished years ago along with his right hand, but there is a Jaime Lannister breathing still and he pledged himself, his love that had not taken root yet, to her with the only kiss they have shared. And if he has to claim second one from bloodstained lips, willing his life into her somehow, then so be it.

When he rides into the camp at nightfall, unrest ripples through it as if he had plunged himself into a pond. He doesn’t stop until he comes to her tent; the chest with the gem that lured him beneath the surface.

He hurries in and then freezes two steps later, because she is there, looking up alarmed from where she has been pouring over letters. Perhaps even one to tell him of her state and whomever might be injured in her stead. “Jaime?” She asks and he tries to remember how to breathe, even the sigh of relief hasn’t got past something dislodging in his chest, wobbling there and looking for an edge to fall over.

“Jaime, what are you doing here? Are you alright? Did something happen at the Rock?” Brienne stands up, frown on her face, but one of concern, and her eyes ask for an answer to riddle his presence has brought. He shakes his head and she makes her way toward him, only slightly more at ease.

Jaime sways in the small space between same and change, between the waterfall of feelings that could take him crashing on the rocks and safety of playing it off with a joke, something neutral. Anything but the truth.

He has jumped cliffs for lesser things.

“I heard you were hurt,” he offers, lamely, feeling as if he’s ten again, telling truths that make for shoddy excuses to get out of scolding.

“The rumors of my injury are greatly exaggerated, though sadly same cannot be said of Ser -”

“You are injured?” His voice breaks on the jagged truth and he looks her over again for a sign of harm, but sees nothing obvious.

“Just a scratch that should be healed by next battle. Nothing that will impede our victory. Jaime, why are you here? Are there news from the Starks?”

He thinks of when he asked her a month ago if she hadn’t dreamed of love from songs before agreeing so simply to their union of convenience. She had thought him mocking once more, her face darkening, and reminded him nothing about her choice had been easy. And then, soothed by something in his expression, told him she knew she was neither the maid nor the knight of legends old. I am made for war, Jaime, but no one will ride across the battlefield just to hear my voice.

He could not tell her different then, could not risk to breach the peace warmed by morning sun, but he cannot stop his free fall now. (Unless she doesn’t want him, not even want to want to him. Then he will collide with the rocks below where water turns to foam and never speak of it again.)

“I thought my wife was injured, perhaps dying, and had to hear her scolding me at least once more.”

Her face is blank, flimsy lace of confusion around the edges, and then he can watch the dawn in her blue eyes, as light of realization begin to shine in them, but just as Jaime starts to smile, the sun sinks back into the oceans and her gaze dims.

“Brienne.” He hopes he doesn’t sound like he’s pleading, because he doesn’t want to beg anymore, not even her. Especially not her. She wouldn’t want him to and it’s one of the things he loves about her. But as Brienne takes a step back, shaking her head, he thinks he would do just about anything to have her hear him out.

“No,” her voice is small, almost comically so, as her shoulders hunch as if Brienne is trying to hide from herself, from him (he hates it), before she straightens up and sets her jaw mulishly, staring him down. “No.”

“No because you do not feel the same or no because you think this cannot be true?” There is challenge in his tone as he chases her deeper into the tent. Her silence is an answer, one he can chip away at with an almost patient hand. They sat in their personal castles, bridges up, for so long, but now meeting in neutral grounds isn’t enough for him anymore, he wants to live in her fortress, to be present in every room and fill it with love. He will do just that, infiltrate the depths of the keep gently and with persistence that rivals her stubbornness, if only he knows she would want it, if she dared to.

“I did not ride for an entire day just to make a cruel joke, wife. I thought we were past that, that you trusted me.” Jaime catches his own hurt before it taints his tone too deeply - this is not about him, not in this way. He wants to soothe her instead, reaches out and cups her cheek gently, Brienne’s exhale soft and trembling.

“I do,” she tells him quietly, with firmness and sincerity that buries itself right into his chest, the force of it finally freeing the half-stuck something and he pushes himself up on the balls of his feet, their eyes on even level now. There’s sunlight lighting up the blue once more, tentative but no less blinding and he feels drunk on it.

“Then trust me in this, too. Like I trust you.” His whisper caresses her lips, just a moment before his own follow suit.

In the end, she catches him mid-fall as she always does.