#because it's always been brienne being jaime's mirror

[katsu-curry835]

Why Bisexual Jon Snow Could Work /srs

Jon Snow is bisexual and here's why.

Aight, I'm aware the queer rep in asoiaf is pretty eh for the most part. Sweets is cool, and Loras and Renly have a nice implied relationship but Dany and Cersei having gay sex scenes felt way more fetishized than actually meaningful representation, especially since neither character considers a romance with a woman. Because of this, I'm gonna say that while I think this could be a valid direction to take the story, I'm like 50% sure that GRRM won't write it. Then again, it's been so long between books that times have literally changed and FnB seemed to have a ton of queer relationships so who knows.

Ok, ok, so I've laundered my argument; we all know why we're really here. Jon Snow could be bisexual and that could be really important for the story. Why?

First and most obvious is that it's another parallel with Dany. Jon and Dany have had storylines that directly mirror each other, especially in books 3 and 5. Dany is confirmed bisexual by the narrative, since she has regular sex with her handmaiden Irri, although because of her position of power over her, she tries to limit them. And, as already mentioned, she never gets to be romantically attracted to a woman. Maybe that's coming in future novels, who knows, but all that to say Dany and Jon mirroring each other on the bi front is not inconceivable, especially when you consider that there is already evidence for Jon being bi.

I'm sure most of you deep into this discourse(?) have probably predicted that I'm going to talk about Satin. And if this story does go in the 'Irri' direction, Satin is definitely the candidate for Jon's male love interest. He's a former prostitute from Oldtown, which mirrors another of Dany's handmaids (Doreah I think) and he's Jon's steward, like Irri is to Dany. Other characters also seem to think that Satin has kinda slept his way up the ranks to being Jon's steward, confirming at least that this idea is in GRRM's head. I wanna take a look at a few scenes and see how they could imply a future relationship between Jon and Satin. Take a look at this fight scene between Jaime and Brienne (I promise this is relevant.)

"'Give me the sword, Kingslayer.'

'Oh I will.' He sprang to his feet and drove at her, the longsword alive in his hands. Brienne jumped back, parrying, but he followed, pressing the attack. No sooner did she turn one cut than the next was upon her. The swords kissed and sprang apart and kissed again. Jaime's blood was singing...

...The dance went on. He pinned her against an oak, cursed as she slipped away, followed her through a shallow brook half choked with fallen leaves. Steel rang, steel sang, steel screamed and sparked and scraped, and the woman was grunting like a sow at every crash, yet somehow he could not reach her."

To me this scene has always read as implicitly foreshadowing Brienne and Jaime's future romance. Words like "kissed" or "grunted" or "pinned her against a tree" feel implicitly romantic/sexual, even the way the scene is described as a "dance." Jaime even says at a later point "Might I have this dance my lady" to mock her. Of course there is plenty more in the story as a whole that foreshadows Brienne and Jaime having a relationship, but I use this as an example because I want to point out how GRRM sometimes writes a fight scene as romantic and sexual foreshadowing, or at least that can be how some scenes are interpreted. Now I want to look at the scene where Jon trains Satin.

"It's too heavy," the Oldtown boy complained.

"It's as heavy as it needs to be to stop a sword," Jon said. "Now get it up." He stepped forward, slashing. Satin jerked the shield up in time to catch the sword on its rim, and swung his own blade at Jon's ribs. "Good," Jon said, when he felt the impact on his own shield. "That was good. But you need to put your body into it. Get your weight behind the steel and you'll do more damage than with arm strength alone. Come, try it again, drive at me, but keep the shield up or I'll ring your head like a bell . . ."

This scene reads similarly to me. Words like "jerked," "rim," "get it up," even the one word sentence "Come," can read as sexual foreshadowing in a similar way to Jaime and Brienne if you are given context that Jon and Satin do end up together. In particular, "ring your head like a bell" reminds me of a scene where Gendry gets approached by a girl but rejects her advances.

"I'm named Bella," the girl told Gendry. "For the battle. I bet I could ring your bell, too. You want to?"

I would be remised if I didn't mention that Jon calls Satin pretty three times in the chapter where he's supposed to be engaged in a battle with the wildlings. Like yeah, that's a bit weird, why are you thinking about that now Jon. Or I could mention the fact that he described Satin’s voice swearing his words as being like song and that he could smell the fresh sweet oils Satin rubbed into his beard. Jon… buddy you got something you wanna say? I’m joking of course: you don't have to be queer to recognize another man's beauty. What I think puts this into perspective is if you compare this to how he describes Val, someone who it's generally agreed upon that he takes an interest in.

Here's a quote where Jon describes Satin:

"The boy claimed to be eighteen, older than Jon, but he was green as summer grass for all that. Satin, they called him, even in the wool and mail and boiled leather of the Night's Watch; the name he'd gotten in the brothel where he'd been born and raised. He was pretty as a girl with his dark eyes, soft skin, and raven's ringlets. Half a year at Castle Black had toughened up his hands, however, and Noye said he was passable with a crossbow."

Now here's Val:

"Val stood on the tower roof, gazing up at the Wall. Stannis kept her closely penned in rooms above his own, but he did allow her to walk the battlements for exercise. She looks lonely, Jon thought. Lonely, and lovely. Ygritte had been pretty in her own way, with her red hair kissed by fire, but it was her smile that made her face come alive. Val did not need to smile; she would have turned men's heads in any court in the wide world."

I mean, the fact that "pretty" is a word used to describe both Ygritte and Satin is a connection that I shouldn't need to point out the significance of, but I digress. If you actually compare these quotes, both look like neutral descriptions of someone's appearance in isolation, however in context, you have to ask why the author shows you this stuff. Why does Jon comment on how good looking both of these characters are so often? It doesn't seem like there would be any other purpose to these, again, repeated descriptions of both Val and Satin other than to highlight that the fact that Jon finds both of them attractive is important.

Again, none of this proves anything outright. I mention this because this is the sort of thing where if you reread the books with this lens, suddenly more things start to jump out at you, and it can read like obvious foreshadowing you missed. Like when Catelyn sees her reflection in some armor and comments on how "drowned" she looks. It doesn't mean too much on a first read, but when you know what happens to her, it's some clever foreshadowing.

Another big reason I think Jon getting with Satin might be important is that you can see it as a pivotal part of Jon's character arc, specifically Jon's sexual awakening storyline. When Jon first has sex with Ygritte, she's the one who initiates the interaction. In fact she has been doing that the whole time he's had her hostage, teasing him with advances and mocking him for his inexperience. In the famous cave scene, Jon's thoughts are how he wants to bang her, but also about how it would be in conflict with his vows. That's the main reason he never has sex with her until she incites it on her own; it's not because he doesn't want to. It's because he thinks it would violate the words he swore at the weirwood.

So Ygritte begins this part of his arc, and Jon discovers that he likes having sex, how original. But he still feels reservations about it, during the act and afterwards. After all, his people resent him for being able to openly take a woman to bed with him, while they have to go to Mole's Town to dig if they want to get any action at all.

My view on this is that the story is heading in a sex-positive direction with respect to Jon. There’s plenty of theming about this “why is it a sin if it feels so good” etc etc. The books are full to the brim of people feeling needlessly guilty about having casual sex, Jon especially. Where I think this is headed, therefore, is probably something like a wildling understanding of sex; Jon has to view sex as Ygritte did, because that was always the healthiest way for him to go about it. Except this time, to complete his arc, he is going to need to take the initiative himself and embrace his desires like Ygritte did. Her teasing him for not doing this was trying to get him to come out of his shell. It would feel strange to me if this went nowhere. Jon needs a future romantic/sexual partner so that he can feel no qualms with taking the initiative with them. How he learns to do that is up to George but suffice it to say, however uncertain I maybe that this partner will be Satin, a future romance is in the cards for Lord Snow.

So Jon's in a bit of a bind here from a meta perspective. If we want him to complete his sexual awakening storyline, he's going to have to take the initiative himself with a partner without feeling any inhibitions. But he can't do that if he's still a brother of the Night's Watch because of the aforementioned conflict with his vows. But he's not going to stop being a crow, his vows are important to him. So how do we reconcile the fact that Jon's character arc about his sexuality needs to be resolved, but he also needs to keep to his words? Simple: make his next partner male so it doesn't violate anything.

I've actually thought this could work as a plot point for anyone either in the Night's Watch or the Kingsguard. One of these men surely has to consider at some point the obvious loophole of "so I can't bed a woman, but what about a man?" and how that affects their honor or whatever. It just slots kinda nicely into Jon's storyline here. Another reason it really works is that Jon is looking to socially progress the Night’s Watch: unity with the wildlings, defending Satin from homophobia etc. Him realising the obvious flaw of the vows for not considering that men can be romantically involved through his own experiences as a bi guy can help him begin to dismantle the outdated nature of the customs. He’s framed as this sort of reformer, and being a queer bastard (who is also probably the lost heir to the Targaryen dynasty) makes this thematically poignant. He’s an outcast, but also a king.

Of course, he’s always been an outcast, being queer would just help add to that. And this is just one way of writing this arc; I’m not married to this take on this basis alone.

I can so imagine a scene where Jon is having sex with Satin and the lit hearth is positioned behind Satin's head from Jon's POV and it looks like Satin's been 'kissed by fire.' Also, Jon considering how Ygritte would feel about him doing this and coming to that conclusion that she would be proud seems like a great way to end a chapter about the two hooking up because Jon's arc would be basically resolved.

This final part is something that I feel should not be left merely implied: Jon being canonically bisexual would be great representation. This is one of the most beloved and famous heroes in all of fantasy, hell, in all of modern fiction. Making him queer would be a really important step forward for queer rep that should not be underestimated. Verity Ritchie (VerilyBitchie on yt) did an excellent video essay on bisexuality in reality tv, a point from which I'm going to paraphrase: it's really hard to effectively depict bisexuals because any confirmed relationship with another character would look like they 'picked a side.' But in order to continually show someone's openness to sexual attraction to two or more genders, you risk going to far the other way, falling into the bisexual sex demon stereotype. This is a really difficult needle to thread, and is why we have characters like Nick Nelson constantly having to remind us that they're bi, rather than having us just assume they could be. Put simply, we need better bi representation, especially with men and Jon Snow is excellent casting for the role. His relationship to Ygritte is constantly referenced throughout the narration as something he treasures and misses, so there would be no doubt that he was not 'gay the whole time.' But, if the Satin story goes ahead, there can be no doubt he's not queer either. Literature is a great place to put bi characters, I think, since an internal monologue can remind you of past relationships with other characters of different genders and how they mean something to the character in question, but never undermining the integrity of the current relationship.

Me personally, I'd be buzzing for Jon Snow to be confirmed as bi. Really interested to see people's thoughts on this.

[fleurdulys]

You know when jaime's half drunk ass said to brienne "i've never slept with a knight before" what he meant was "i've never slept with anyone so honourable and so brave and so kind before" like that was an acknowledgement of brienne's qualities but also an acknowledgement of his own awkwardness and insecurity. He never slept with anyone better than Brienne before.

[alliluyevas]

Top five asoiaf relationships (of any kind)

lannister sibling clusterfuck for reasons previously established in previous post about sibling relationships. truly they are everything to me. also like obsessed w the broader lannister dynamic bringing in tywin and the aunts and uncles and cousins and kids. every possible permutation there is fascinating to me but other people got to get some air time so i'm only letting them have one spot

jaime and brienne....this is my favorite romantic relationship in asoiaf and it is truly just so good really the gift that keeps on giving to me...but it's also so much more than that. it is parallels and mirroring and foils and Thee Chivalric Romance (gender neutral)

before i continue i just want to put in an aside. i always list jaime as my third favorite character after catelyn and theon and i do think that's the correct choice for me but i feel like the relationship dynamics involving jaime are the most interesting to me like there is just so much to unpack there! that boy is full of love! and psychological problems! which is not to say that catelyn and theon's relationships aren't interesting and compelling to me because they really and truly are but the lannister dynamic is just soooo intimately complex and tragic

3. this feels like another copout like "the whole ass lannister family" but can i say the entire starkfam...like the ways that Ned and Catelyn relate to their children and are loved back in return are so complex and compelling to me as well as the marriage they've built w/ each other and the ways that they've brought in aspects of their birth families and how the siblings relate to each other. SO important to me. they have less on page interactions than the Lannisters too bc they've been separated but it's so clear from the way they start the story together that they love each other so so much and the ways they think about each other after separation and loss are so poignant. when we get stark siblings reunion i will be CRYING IN THE CLUB. if I had to pick some specific relationships that make me feel some way it would be Ned + Catelyn, Catelyn + Robb, Catelyn + Arya, Ned + Arya, Ned + Sansa...and god again I'm just listing like 900 things but they're all so painfully real

4. catelyn and brienne are soooooo interesting to me like the way they are so similar and yet so so different and that weird interplay of sympathy and pity and devotion oooooh it's everything to me

again I want to put in a little aside here wrt Theon because theon is my boy and I do think all of his relationships and interactions with other people are really compelling but when it comes down to making these lists I feel like I'm gravitating more to other relationships and part of that is because Theon is so deeply socially isolated and disconnected, so his relationships don't have the same depth of connection that the Starks have with each other or even that the Lannisters do despite their myriad other issues. Theon is so, so lonely and adrift you know? and like that's part of what I do find so compelling about his character but again when asked to list my most favorite relationships between characters my mind immediately goes elsewhere. That being said I think his dynamic with Jeyne is so poignant and fascinating, and his interactions with Asha are also wonderful and I do think maybe someday he could build those kinds of deep connections and I would love to see that for him.

5. so i feel like number 5 ought to be Theon + Asha or Theon + Jeyne but I can't really pick there lol they're both great dynamics but in such different ways. also shoutout to Ned and Robert which is one of the most fascinating and tragic dynamics to me.

[dreadwulf]

Through the Fire, To the Limit, To the Wall

part one  

part two  

part three 

the original Part Four, which will now be Five

(Here’s a surprise chapter of Ring of Fire! Or at least it was a surprise for me. This will actually slot in as chapter 4 on AO3, as it takes place before Jaime arrives at King’s Landing in the Burning Down the House chapter.)

For Podrick, at least, it is a beautiful day.

He had been awakened with a surly shout by the Commander's squire Peck, who called the boys to order like they were real soldiers, and they had clamoured up and out of their beds with a minimum of dawdling and giggling. They were all ages and sizes, and they lined up by height, rearranging themselves anew every day with Pod shoved somewhere in the middle. 

When everyone else had been sent to break their fast, he, Podrick, had been taken on a special mission, stealthily retrieving Oathkeeper from the armory tent. Peck had distracted the quartermaster with conversation while Pod slipped inside, and he had been quiet as a mouse searching through the weaponry to find the valyrian steel sword enclosed in a fine case lined with velvet. The blade stood nearly as tall as him, and he had to smuggle it under his cloak, holding tight to the scabbard with his hands behind his back and even then he looked to have a second head, but somehow no one had questioned him when he reappeared at Peck’s side and they managed to steal away together without raising any alarm. 

Peck’s praise for that had been nearly as great a reward as being allowed to swing the sword himself, for just a few moments, before they put it back in the scabbard and brought it to the wood where Ser Jaime awaited them. 

Ser Brienne had been there as well. She stood right next to the Commander and yet they had looked very far apart. But still, she had smiled to see Podrick, and the two of them had been set on a pretty chestnut horse and sent riding off into a new adventure -- leaving Pod’s new friends behind, but back together with his lady knight, a squire once more.

All in all, it is a wonderful start to a day, and it is still yet morning. 

“Did you enjoy your time in the Lannister camp, Podrick?” Ser Brienne asks him. She rides ahead of him, while the squire grips her waist, and she turns her head only a little to address him, so that he cannot see her face.

“Oh yes, milady,” Pod answers her excitedly. “Do you think we could go back for a visit someday?”

She turns away at that, and does not answer. 

They ride without speaking for some time. They look to be going east, with the sun stabbing directly at them through the trees. He holds onto her only lightly. Pod knows she had been badly hurt, is still recovering, and he does not want to pain her. He wonders if she is really recovered - any time he catches a glimpse of her face, her brow is furrowed with pain. Perhaps they should have stayed with the Lannister army a day longer. 

“Where will we ride to next, milady Ser?” he pipes up. 

Still she does not answer.

Ser Brienne has always kept herself to herself, and Podrick is accustomed to this. He feels fine riding silently with her, and today it is especially grand to be in her company again. It’s always all right either way, whether he talks or not. If he stammers she will not laugh at him, or hurry him along impatiently and push him through each sentence as Lord Tyrion used to. No, the quiet around her has room for him to finish his thoughts, and often in her company his stuttering lifts and he can speak quite normally. Or he can be quiet as a mouse, and she will not think him stupid or forget he is there.

There is often a great deal on her mind, and sometimes she is lost in her thoughts and does not answer him. But Ser Brienne remembers things he says even if she doesn’t reply. She always remembers Pod. She always makes sure he has food to eat and a warm place to sleep. She has been teaching him to fight with a sword, just because he asked her to, and she is a patient and forgiving teacher. If she promises him something she will do it without fail. She is solid and reliable and when there is danger she will be there to meet it first of anyone, and she would never run off and forget him or abandon him to a nasty fate. He knows that as surely as he knows the sun will rise. Pod is safe around Ser Brienne, though that is not a word or a sense that he is familiar with. He does not remember having a single home, or parents, but he remembers sleeping soundly under the stars with Ser Brienne watchful over him in the dark night, and that feeling must be much the same. 

Brienne stops them just before they reach Maidenpool. A train of wagons are rolling out of the growing settlement with a moderate guard. They wait a little ways back from the road.

“Lord Tarly’s men,” Podrick identifies the banner. “Allies of King Renly, and of the Tyrells.”

“Lord Tarly is no ally of mine,” she says darkly, and in a lower tone adds, “but what allies have I left?”

He tugs at her sleeve. “Should we tell him of Ser Hyle?” 

Ser Brienne frowns harder somehow. “What would we tell him? No. We avoid Lord Tarly for now.”

When the train has passed, they ride cautiously into Maidenpool. The streets are crowded, but all are about their own business -- moving livestock, doing morning chores. No one gives them a second glance. 

They pass the bathhouse, newly festooned in banners to cover the faded bloodstains on the stone. Women congregate all around it, dressed in bright colors, hair wet and shining in the morning sun.

“Maidenpool looks a fair sight better than it did when we saw it last,” Podrick says, attempting to be cheerful.

He expects her to still be surly and silent, and he is surprised when she stops the horse and answers him instead.

“When first I saw this place, the waters were bloated with corpses, and the streets filled only with burnt-out husks of buildings. Archers ambushed us here, and Ser Jaime and I fought them off.”

Pod blinks back at her. That must have been when Ser Jaime had been her prisoner, on the journey back to King’s Landing. She speaks of that rarely, even less than she speaks of everything. And then she looks back at him, as though she has just remembered that he is there.

“Do you know the tale of Jonquil’s Pool?” Brienne asks him abruptly.

“Yes, milady.” Pod offers it eagerly, leaning towards her. “The knight Ser Florian the Fool saw the lady Jonquil bathing there with her sisters, and he fell in love. Or at least, that’s the part I know.”

Brienne’s expression is distant and unreadable. She looks at the ladies going in and out of the bathhouse, and holds the reins tightly in her hands.

“He was a homely man, Florian. Picture him more patchwork than shining. His armor was mismatched and his reputation spotted. He was only a hedge knight and not well-born. He was no possible match for a highborn maid. But when he saw Jonquil in the bath he could not help but fall in love with her, for she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Despite everything, he could not help himself. And in time he won her heart, through many trials and heartaches, he won her.” 

Pod shrugs. “Those songs are for girls perhaps. I haven’t heard those parts. They never sang them for me.”

“Perhaps they are.” She darkens palpably, her face dipping down into shadow. “I used to love those songs. When I was a girl, or something like it. But I admit it was foolish, Pod. Life isn’t a song.”

She spurs her horse to ride on.  

“Could you sing it for me, milady?” His innocent face turns up to her. “One of the songs about Florian and Jonquil?”

She snorts. “Ser Jaime could have sung you Six Maidens in a Pool, with great enthusiasm.”

There is an odder silence after that. 

“Do you want to look at the pool, milady Ser? We could stop at the Bathhouse.”

“I’ve never seen it,”  she concedes faintly. “Though I’ve been past this way thrice before. But it’s a place for fine ladies, Pod. Not for me.”

Instead they stop at a stream on the other side of Maidenpool. This one is a fairly ordinary pool, fed by a small spring. Before the winter there would have been flowers, and one can see where they would have been. Now there are only sickly shrubs. The water, though, is lovely and clear. 

Brienne dismounts her horse and kneels, suddenly, at the side of the stream. For an odd moment, it seems as though she will remove her riding gear and wade into it. She did after all never get that bath she had been promised. Instead she only leans forward and cups her hands in the water, splashing her face. She leaves her hands covering her face a moment too long, and when she removes them she stares down into the mirrored surface of the water for a long while. 

“Pod,” she says very seriously, “did you fare well amongst the boys at the camp? Were you well treated?”

“Yes Milady,” Pod nods eagerly. “They have their own tent and it’s bigger, much bigger than the one we use, and dry and warm and they sing and tell tales all the night through. Then we rode in the wagons and slept when the army moved and at dusk we could run and play until full dark and then we got real meat to eat. Jossmyn Peck, Ser Jaime’s squire, he said he would spar with me sometime, we never did though…”

Brienne nods back slowly. “Were they frightened? The other boys?”

Pod frowns at her quizzically. “No. Should they be?”

“I suppose not.” Brienne looks up and down the road swiftly. “Would you like to go back to them for a time?”

He frowns harder. “Aren’t we on a quest, milady?”  

“I am. You are not.” She stands. 

“I’m your squire.”

“I don’t have a squire. I’m not a knight.” She rubs her face again, leaving it wet and shining. “I’m a foolish girl who’s a long way from home, and I don’t know what to do next.”

“You are a knight really.” Pod argues with her stubbornly. “You’re the best knight I’ve ever seen, better than the Kingsguard and Ser Hyle and the knights we met on the road--”

“But I’m not. I thought I could be, if I were only so perfect and honorable that no one could find any fault in me, and I could fight better than everyone else, then they would have to knight me, they would have no choice. But I’m none of those things, Pod. I promised to protect Lady Catelyn, and instead she was slain. I promised to see her daughters freed from King’s Landing and they were already gone. I promised to see Ser Jaime safe to King’s Landing, and he lost his hand along the way. I promised to rescue Lady Sansa, and I cannot find her, much less see her safely home. I promised to restore Ser Jaime’s honor, and instead I betrayed him.”

“We can still find Lady Sansa,” the boy says stubbornly. “We haven’t looked everywhere yet.”

“We have no leads. There was only rumor to go on and even that has run dry. She could be anywhere now, she could be in the North or in the Reach, or in the Vale, or even across the Narrow Sea. We cannot search everywhere.” Her head bows forward, and her cheeks are wet.  “And what would I say if ever I found her? Shall I tell her how I failed her mother, and what she became? How then would I convince her that I can protect her? I cannot even convince myself.”

“You can protect her! You can protect anybody!”

“No, I can’t. I couldn’t protect Dick Crabb, I couldn’t protect Ser Hyle Hunt or Septon Merribald, I couldn’t protect the children at the orphanage, and I couldn’t protect you.” Her eyes fix, noticeably, on Podrick’s neck, where he knows an angry red burn around his throat still marks him. “I will never be knighted, and there is no place that I belong. Perhaps I should just return home.”

Brienne looks very sad. She has looked this way ever since they left the camp this morning. 

Podrick hates how sad she looks. He wracks his brain for something to say that might make her not look so sad. 

“Don’t worry, Pod,” Ser Brienne interrupts his thoughts. She is trying to smile. “All will be well.”

Podrick recognizes this smile. He has seen it before.

Ser Jaime had been angry when Podrick had met him, though he was trying not to show it. He had reassured him, and even made jokes, but something had seethed beneath it. The golden commander had been formidable in his anger, a towering fit of ire, and it had frightened him. The Lion of Lannister, the Kingslayer, had a famous temper fit to topple kingdoms. In the face of it he had stammered and stumbled over his words and the man had been like to snap his head off in frustration, so impatient he had been. 

“P-please ser,” he had finally pleaded with him. “It should be me imp...p-prisoned and not her. She only meant to free me; she begged them not to m-make her do it. She begged them. Ser Brienne would not betray a friend, it was m-me, she did it for me. P-put me on a stake in the ground and let her go.”

Ser Jaime had abruptly left him when he said that, with an expression more of pain than anger.

Podrick thinks on him now as a lion with a wounded paw roaring to keep everyone back. The second time he had met him the lion had been only wounded and not roaring, and not quite so frightening. He had been kinder to him, that time. He had smiled more, but the smiles did not reach his eyes. He had many more questions that time, mostly about Ser Brienne. Though he had called her Lady, which felt strange. Lady Brienne. No one else on their journey had ever addressed her so, and not with that lightly mocking tone which somehow sounded fond and not cruel. He asked, the Lion, if Lady Brienne had ever spoken of him, and Podrick had to tell him no. 

What he should have told him was that her silence on that matter had been very loud indeed. That his Lady kept certain things unspoken, and most of all those closest to her heart. He should have told the Lion how she had unwrapped Oathkeeper, the blade he had given her, only at night when she thought no one was looking and stared upon it, and ran her fingers over the jewels and the lions in the pommel, and wrapped it most carefully afterwards, handled it as though it were the most precious thing that she had, the most beloved. 

But he told the Lion no, because he did not know how to explain the other part, and she had never spoken of it. And the Lion had been unsurprised, and he had smiled a false smile, and sent him out to play in the snow, and Podrick had not thought of it again until now, when Ser Brienne shows him the same smile. 

They must have the same wound, somehow. A blow which had carved them in twain, and they did not know how to put themselves back together. 

Podrick knows little and less of how two people might rebuild that kind of trust. But the memory jars something else in him, a memory of the Lannister brother that he knew far better. Lord Tyrion, the Imp, who had been kind to Podrick, if a little dismissive. He had said a thousand wise things, and even read aloud to him, from time to time. And there had been a book there in his quarters, or even several books, about the great knights and the Age of Heroes. There is something there, faint in his memory, that he knows will be important.

Podrick stands up and speaks eagerly, without stammering. “At King’s Landing, I squired for Tyrion Lannister. Lord Tyrion was a smart man. He used to read a whole book every day! And he said, I remember, he said... that there were no knights in the Age of Heroes, they came later, with the Anders--”

“Andals--” she corrects him quietly.

“--right. The Andals had knights, but Westeros didn’t, not then. The heroes before they came were just heroes. But we call them knights anyway, even though they weren’t actually knighted like we do it now. They weren’t really knights!”

“That’s hardly the point--”

“The point is, it doesn’t matter what they really were. They’re knights now, whether people then called them that or not. Because of what they did. Because they were great.”

Her hands make fists. “They were great. They did great things. I haven’t done anything but lose.”

“They probably didn’t always win! We just don’t sing songs about those parts. Maybe they lost and lost and lost and they kept trying until they did something great, and that’s the part we remember now. Not the hard parts.”

Brienne looks down into the pool.

"If they never knighted you, it wouldn’t change the things you did. You would still have killed the bandits in the Saltpans. You would still have stopped that awful Rorge from hurting the children at the crossroads."

"But I don’t want to be merely a killer. I want to keep my promises. I want to be honorable." Her hair falls over her face, obscuring the terrible scars on her cheek. "I couldn't keep my oath to Lady Catelyn without breaking faith with Ser Jaime. I had to choose. If I cannot keep my oaths, if honor is denied me, what is left?"

But she seems to know the answer. She brushes her hair back behind her ears and sighs, and she sounds much older than before.

“There is something… something I feel I must do. But I don’t know if I’m brave enough. This task I cannot fail in, and I do not know if I can succeed.”

“You should try,” Pod pushes. 

“If I am a true knight,” she says hesitantly, and then more firmly, “then I must protect the realm, and defend the innocent. Less than a day’s ride from here, Pod, there is an invading army coming to kill King Tommen. He’s only a boy, even younger than you. And he is Ser Jaime’s son. I may have failed in the quest he gave me, but I might be able to help him defend the King. I must do whatever I can. Do you understand Pod? I have to.” 

 Pod brightens. This sounds more like the Brienne he knows. “I can help.”

“No,” she says sharply. “No. This part I must do alone. I can risk myself for this, but I will not risk you.”

“You would leave me behind?”

“I will come back.” She puts her hands on his shoulders. “If I yet live I will come back for you, Pod, and we’ll look for Lady Sansa. And for Lord Tyrion too, I know you wanted to rejoin him…”

“I want to stay with you,” Pod says miserably. 

Brienne looks surprised. Then her expression softens, briefly, and she squeezes his shoulders.

 “I will not be riding to battle, Podrick, not the way you’re thinking. I cannot be of help on the battlefield without knowing his plans, but I can try to get into the city ahead of the invasion, and protect the King and the Queen Regent. I will have to disguise myself, and there would be no way to bring you along. But do not worry, I would not go off and forget you. Not for Ser Jaime, not for anyone. I gave Ser Jaime to the Brotherhood to make sure you would be safe."

Pod’s face falls. Could it be his fault that Ser Lady Brienne and Ser Jaime are so unhappy? 

"I’m s-s-sorry,” he stammers.

"Don’t be sorry!” she says quickly, wiping at his face with her thumb. “I’m not sorry. Because of that you are here and alive and well. I could never be sorry for that. But now Ser Jaime is the one who needs my help. He thinks he will not win this battle, but he will go anyway, to try to save his son. I fear he will perish in the attempt. I cannot allow that to happen.”

Brienne’s face takes on a strange light then, one that Podrick will long remember.

“The knights in the songs would risk their lives to save a fair maiden from danger. Ser Jaime is not a maiden, but... If there is any chance I might save him from a ghastly fate I must try. I know it must seem foolish. I can’t explain it, but… it’s like a song, Podrick, a song I hear in my heart. Like when Ser Galladon went out to face the dragon, or when Florian met Jonquil. They knew which way their destiny lay, and they rode to meet it. I must do the same, or else be a coward forever. I only hope I can live up to their example.”

Podrick does not want to let her go again so soon. But if she doesn’t go, he knows, she will let herself down, and it will make her even sadder. Perhaps if she can help Ser Jaime, it will heal this wound of hers. Perhaps they could heal each other.  

“You can do it, milady ser. You can do anything.” He puts all the enthusiasm he can muster into his encouragement. “You’re the best sword-fighter in the world. You can take a few Targaryens.”

Brienne smiles genuinely, a gap-toothed, shy smile that he has never seen before.

“That’s going a bit far, Pod, but I shall do my best. You’re right, even if I cannot be a true knight, I can still protect the innocent and do what’s right. And if I cannot fight for honor, I can still fight for love.” 

Podrick beams. “What can I do to help?”

“You can go and stay with the other boys at the Lannister camp. Jaime won’t take them to war. I think he will leave an ancillary camp behind with the boys, and anyone else he would like to save. The boys, and his squire, and perhaps your cousin too. When you find them there, they will look after you until I return. Find them, and wait for me. Will you do that for me, Pod? So I wont worry?”

He nods. Because he has to, because she needs him to. He’s only just found her again, but he has to let her go. He can see it now - she is a true knight, and she is on a quest to a place he can’t follow. As her squire, he will have to do as she commands. 

He will go, and he will take great gulps of air to choke back the tears until she can’t see him anymore. 

She gives him much of the coin that Ser Jaime had left her, and all of the supplies too. She takes only the hound’s helmet, and Oathkeeper, and leaves him her horse. 

Brienne kneels before him before he takes his leave. “Keep practicing while I’m gone. Every day, the sword forms and the footwork. Will you?”

Pod nods wordlessly, to keep himself from stammering or sobbing. 

“I will return, I promise I will. I came back to the Brotherhood for you and I will come back to you this time. You’re my squire and as long as I live I will come back for you.”

Pod stares into her eyes resolutely. “No matter what. Promise.”

She stares back. “I promise.”

Pod throws his arms around her neck. At first she is still, but then her big arms wrap around him and pull him flush against her,  and she holds him so tightly he can scarcely breathe. She whispers, “thank you,” into his hair, again and again. He does not know what she is thanking him for.

[agentrouka-blog]

@ ygritte hate post. In broad strokes, we agree Jon and Sansa are on parallel journeys, there is also plenty of parallels between Hound's sexual assault night with Jon and Ygritte (steel kiss, hand on face, and so on). (1/3)

Then Jon gets into it at the water pool, that is his "unkiss", no doubt. Notice though, the details about him getting riled up by sex red hair, she saying she is half-fish, debating fucking your own sister. I'm forgetting stuff of course. I'm sure that chapter is rife with that. (2/3)

Jonsa fans have speculated over Unkiss being a cover for another kiss (always with the cousins, the blood and fire cloak, and so forth). It could be that cave means much the same for him. Like said they are on parallel journeys and there's all those throwbacks to each other. (3/3)

So like Sansa, Jon is repressing something there. Something that happened in the winterfell pools. Bran remembers bathing with his sisters, but unlike Bran (who did saw OSHA getting out of one in that segment), Jon saw something that was a revelation. Like Florian when he saw Jonquil bathing with her sisters. Something red and then wanted to kiss, not downstairs but upstairs. Maybe he did... and maybe Ned caught him at it, because he later dreams of being caught there being innapropriate. (4/3)

In the dream he screams he will never father a abstard, he hates being one for they are lustful creatures born of lust and lies. Like lusting after their sisters. Its not like he is a Targaryen! Distraught, Jon decides to prove his nature wrong. He is not a deviant because he is a bastard lusting after his sister! So he decides to go to the Nights Watch, where he'll be chaste ever. Maybe. Kind of creepy but funny. It all comes together too, all those tidbits that are otherwise scattered. (5/3)

PS: Six maidens in the pool... Six Stark children. Not seven for once either way. And so Jon says in the show "we should have never left Winterfell" because it echoes the We shouldn't have left the cave. And Jon says they'll go back and Yggrite yaps You Know Nothing, but he was right. Jon will go back with the real redhead Sansa, back to Winterfell real pools. (6/3)

Thank you!! This ask really sent my brain whirring.

I already like the idea of the Unkiss drawing from a repressed memory, but I hadn’t noticed how the Ygritte memory-edit might interlock with that. 

We have this confirmation that they were fairly natural and relaxed about nudity among children:

"Might be there isn't." She grinned. "What are you staring at, boy? Never seen a woman before?"

"I have so." Bran had bathed with his sisters hundreds of times and he'd seen serving women in the hot pools too. Osha looked different, though, hard and sharp instead of soft and curvy. Her legs were all sinew, her breasts flat as two empty purses. "You've got a lot of scars." (ACOK, Bran II) 

Hundreds of times. We know Sansa associated hot water in a bath with Winterfell. 

The hot water made her think of Winterfell, and she took strength from that. She had not washed since the day her father died, and she was startled at how filthy the water became. (AGOT, Sansa VI)

So does Jon:

It was short walk to the bathhouse, where he took a cold plunge to wash the sweat off and soaked in a hot stone tub. The warmth took some of the ache from his muscles and made him think of Winterfell's muddy pools, steaming and bubbling in the godswood. Winterfell, he thought. (ASOS, Jon XII)

Then we have the image of the Water Gardens.

It was Daenerys who filled the gardens with laughing children. Her own children at the start, but later the sons and daughters of lords and landed knights were brought in to be companions to the boys and girls of princely blood. And one summer's day when it was scorching hot, she took pity on the children of her grooms and cooks and serving men and invited them to use the pools and fountains too, a tradition that has endured till this day." (…) 

As the children splashed in the pools, Daenerys watched from amongst the orange trees, and a realization came to her. She could not tell the highborn from the low. Naked, they were only children. All innocent, all vulnerable, all deserving of long life, love, protection. 

(ADWD, The Watcher)

And we know that the children of all ranks played together in the godswood, too. 

He had watched wistfully while the Walders contested with Turnip the cook's boy and Joseth's girls Bandy and Shyra. The Walders had decreed that Bran should be the judge and decide whether or not people had said "Mayhaps," but as soon as they started playing they forgot all about him.

The shouts and splashes soon drew others: Palla the kennel girl, Cayn's boy Calon, TomToo whose father Fat Tom had died with Bran's father at King's Landing. Before very long, every one of them was soaked and muddy. Palla was brown from head to heel, with moss in her hair, breathless from laughter. Bran had not heard so much laughing since the night the bloody raven came. (ACOK, Bran I)

It’s fair to conclude that the Jon and the Starklings may indeed have not just played but also bathed together in the godswood. 

There is an interesting association with Maidenpool, which is tied to the romance of Florian and Jonquil.

At Maidenpool, Lord Mooton's red salmon still flew above the castle on its hill, but the town walls were deserted, the gates smashed, half the homes and shops burned or plundered. They saw nothing living but a few feral dogs that went slinking away at the sound of their approach. The pool from which the town took its name, where legend said that Florian the Fool had first glimpsed Jonquil bathing with her sisters, was so choked with rotting corpses that the water had turned into a murky grey-green soup.

Jaime took one look and burst into song. "Six maids there were in a spring-fed pool . . ."

"What are you doing?" Brienne demanded.

"Singing. 'Six Maids in a Pool,' I'm sure you've heard it. And shy little maids they were, too. Rather like you. Though somewhat prettier, I'll warrant."

(ASOS, Jaime III)

Jonquil bathed with ther sisters, when Florian first glimpsed her.

The pool becomes filthy and spoiled. Like Sansa’s bathwater, but also like the muddy Winterfell pools. Choked with corpses?

When the dreams took him, he found himself back home once more, splashing in the hot pools beneath a huge white weirwood that had his father's face. Ygritte was with him, laughing at him, shedding her skins till she was naked as her name day, trying to kiss him, but he couldn't, not with his father watching. He was the blood of Winterfell, a man of the Night's Watch. I will not father a bastard, he told her. I will not. I will not. "You know nothing, Jon Snow," she whispered, her skin dissolving in the hot water, the flesh beneath sloughing off her bones until only skull and skeleton remained, and the pool bubbled thick and red.  (ASOS, Jon VI)

The memory edit and the switch toward “love” in the cave is mirrored in this rather defiant dream, that recalls the pools at home, his father’s watching face, but also the laughter at home in the godswood. A pool in a sacred place spoiled with death. 

A memory spoiled by trauma.

Dany, who I would argue is a character strongly foreshadowed in Ygritte, has her own association with sacred pools.

They rode to the lake the Dothraki called the Womb of the World, surrounded by a fringe of reeds, its water still and calm. A thousand thousand years ago, Jhiqui told her, the first man had emerged from its depths, riding upon the back of the first horse.

The procession waited on the grassy shore as Dany stripped and let her soiled clothing fall to the ground. Naked, she stepped gingerly into the water. Irri said the lake had no bottom, but Dany felt soft mud squishing between her toes as she pushed through the tall reeds. The moon floated on the still black waters, shattering and re-forming as her ripples washed over it. Goose pimples rose on her pale skin as the coldness crept up her thighs and kissed her lower lips. The stallion's blood had dried on her hands and around her mouth. Dany cupped her fingers and lifted the sacred waters over her head, cleansing herself and the child inside her while the khal and the others looked on.  (AGOT, Daenerys V)

This recalls Ygritte in the pools and Sansa in her filthy bath. But the presence of the blood of a horse slaughtered for her to eat its heart, the presence of the Stallion that Mounts the World, the prophecy and the things we know comes after... all that is ominous and the kiss of the cold is unlikely to be tender. 

"When you find yourself in bed with an ugly woman, the best thing to do is close your eyes and get on with it," he declared. "Waiting won't make the maid any prettier. Kiss her and be done with it."

"Kiss her?" Ser Barristan repeated, aghast.

"A steel kiss," said Littlefinger. (AGOT, Eddard VIII)

or..

But the Dornishman's blade had a song of its own,

and a bite sharp and cold as a leech. (ASOS, Jon I)

or...

Then the steel was at her throat, and its bite was red and cold. (ASOS, Catelyn VII)

The layers in this… 

Anyway, there’s foreshadowing to Dany in the Ygritte mess, but it’s not exactly happy, while the Sansa connections in there tend to be positive. Sweet and foul all mixed up.

Sansa “remembering” the Unkiss in relation to kissing children (Margaery’s Girls, Sweetrobin) and with “awful” memories (Myranda’s wedding night)  has that same air of mixing something rotten with something that had been perhaps sweet but confusing. I.e. covering a traumatic event with something else. 

Then there’s another interesting association with the incest peach.

As she sat in the common room in her stupid girl clothes, Arya remembered what Syrio Forel had told her, the trick of looking and seeing what was there. When she looked, she saw more serving wenches than any inn could want, and most of them young and comely. And come evenfall, lots of men started coming and going at the Peach. They did not linger long in the common room, not even when Tom took out his woodharp and began to sing "Six Maids in a Pool." The wooden steps were old and steep, and creaked something fierce whenever one of the men took a girl upstairs. "I bet this is a brothel," she whispered to Gendry.

 (ASOS, Arya V)

Right after this they meet Gendry’s half-sister Bella, a “peach” at the Peach.

“I’m named Bella,” the girl told Gendry. “For the battle. I bet I could ring your bell, too. You want to?”

“No,” he said gruffly.

“I bet you do.” She ran a hand along his arm. “I don’t cost nothing to friends of Thoros and the lightning lord.”

“No, I said.” Gendry rose abruptly and stalked away from the table out into the night. 

Bella turned to Arya. “Don’t he like girls?”

While the bell recalls Dany, we should remember that 

Sansa plays “the high harp and the bells” (AGOT, Arya I) 

“Bella” translates to Beauty 

this scene is an unsubtle shout-out to Jon stalking out of the welcoming feast after Benjen teased him about fathering bastards and knowing a woman. After calling Sansa radiant. (AGOT, Jon I) 

So the Dany hints are joined by the Sansa hints. The Dany hints are negative (bells = battle), the Sansa ones positive (bells = music). Why are the Sansa hints there at all?

Before anyone goes “Jonrya!”, remember:

For half a heartbeat she forgot who she was supposed to be. She wasn't any peach, but she couldn't be Arya Stark either, not here with some smelly drunk she did not know. "I'm . . ."

"She's my sister." Gendry put a heavy hand on the old man's shoulder, and squeezed. "Leave her be." (ASOS, Arya V)

Arya is not a peach, she is a sister. Little sister. 

And there’s this:

He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all.  (AGOT, Bran II)

Jon only tastes the cold when silver-haired Val tastes sweetness in the air, but way up high the winter peach makes the air taste sweet, too. 

"Sweet smells are sometimes used to cover foul ones." (ACOK, Daenerys II)

But foul smells might cover sweet ones, too. The Unkiss covers a bitter trauma, but perhaps it was drawn from a more innocent kiss in the past.

The naked red-haired girl by the water might trigger a rewrite of Jon’s perception of Ygritte, but it might draw that from a different kind of confusion, surrounding the same memories that feed Sansa’s editing.

The godswood is certainly a stage for kissing:

As she stood there, all the memories came flooding back to her. Her father had taught her to ride amongst these trees, and that was the elm that Edmure had fallen from when he broke his arm, and over there, beneath that bower, she and Lysa had played at kissing with Petyr.

She had not thought of that in years. How young they all had been — she no older than Sansa, Lysa younger than Arya, and Petyr younger still, yet eager. The girls had traded him between them, serious and giggling by turns. (…)

Robb got to his feet slowly and sheathed his sword, and Catelyn found herself wondering whether her son had ever kissed a girl in the godswood. Surely he must have.  (AGOT, Catelyn XI)

Memories that flood back, young children, innocent games that have consequences much later on, a specific Connection drawn to the Starklings and the Winterfell godswood.

More kissing:

��"I won't! I saw you kissing in the snow. She's just like her mother. Catelyn kissed you in the godswood, but she never meant it, she never wanted you. (ASOS, Sansa VII)

and yet more...

Theon Greyjoy was no stranger to this godswood. He had played here as a boy, skipping stones across the cold black pool beneath the weirwood, hiding his treasures in the bole of an ancient oak, stalking squirrels with a bow he made himself. Later, older, he had soaked his bruises in the hot springs after many a session in the yard with Robb and Jory and Jon Snow. In amongst these chestnuts and elms and soldier pines he had found secret places where he could hide when he wanted to be alone. The first time he had ever kissed a girl had been here. Later, a different girl had made a man of him upon a ragged quilt in the shade of that tall grey-green sentinel. (ADWD, The Prince of Winterfell)

Starklings, kissing and the hot springs all in a paragraph.

I would say there is material here. If GRRM wants to write about Sansa and Jon sharing a memory that involves the hot springs, kissing and references to Florian and Jonquil, he will have planted the hints. It would certainly be a bit poetic if both of them used the same memory soup to create their trauma responses.

**

Before anyone tries to accuse me of hypocrisy when it comes to age gaps, abuse etc. I do not think this was a case of Jon perving on his young sister. Cat was 12 when she played kissing games with a much younger Petyr and Lysa, and I don’t think we are supposed to consider this a threesome. It’s child’s play. That’s my angle here. 

[swordmaid]

Brienne / Jaime / Samwise / Eowyn

brienne

favorite thing about them: difficult to answer because i talk about them everyday but i enjoy how the presence of choice is always present in her everything. it was her choice to follow renly, to serve catelyn, to keep her promise to catelyn, to find jaime’s honor. she is never forced to do anything; everything she has done is by her own choice which is such an interesting juxtaposition to characters like catelyn where they are very much tied down and limited by their society and how they expect women to be. brienne on the other hand, has the luxury of choice--which is a freedom on itself, but that is not to say she isn’t limited by their society. she still IS, but it’s interesting how she managed to achieve that semblance of freedom even though it isn’t since she’ll still being evaluated to their standards (and unlike cat, she’s being evaluated as both a knight and a woman and she’s seen as a failure of both). i also like how--despite the cruelties thrown her way--she never perpetuates it even though she could have!!! easily!! and it’d be understandable if she does but she chooses not to do it. she even feels sympathy for the people who played the bet on her when she heard what happened to them which is super crazy like those dudes didn’t give a shit about her but here she is giving a shit about them even if it’s just for a moment and it’s just like...........wow. you are choosing to be like that and i love you for it

least favorite thing about them: worst taste in men.

favorite line: her whole speech in the quiet isle is so heartbreaking and also one of my favorite passages in the whole story. her saying that selwyn deserved to have daughters who will sing and dance in his halls, and a son that would give him honor but all he is left with is the freakish one that’s not fit to be a son or daughter first of all heartbreaking ): second of all the underlying implication that if she’s the one who died but her other siblings--whether it be galladon, arianne or alysanne--that lived then maybe selwyn wouldn’t be so dishonored is so!!!!! the survivor’s guilt of it all even though it’s not her fault!!!! and it’s really the way that she DID try to be alysanne/arianne, and she DID try to be galladon for him but none of the roles fit because she’s meant for something greater 😭😭😭😭

brOTP: pod and brienne ofc! next to pia and brienne, then sandor and brienne, and then sam and brienne.

OTP: jb

nOTP: tormund x brienne LOL we dont do that here

random headcanon: brienne likes to write poetry and she wrote a bunch dedicated to renly LOL. her old poems are stashed in the bottom of her trunk, collecting dust in her childhood room.

unpopular opinion: brienne’s self-righteous, judgemental and stubborn nature is not as explored nor brought up when talking about her character tbh and i feel like that facet of her character shouldn’t be ignored. when we explore her flaws, it’s usually about her naiveté which is fair since she IS naive--but that’s not her only flaw lol

song i associate with them: rabbit heart (raise it up) by florence + the machine

favorite picture of them: erika’s drawing of brienne in her tarth armour is one of my favourite pieces ever + this one with dunk’s shield!!!

jaime

favorite thing about them: his pov in asos is what made me like him tbh he is just SO well written, and his character is compelling and interesting. his relationship with knighthood is so interesting too like he is THE stereotypical knight in shining armor except he’s not that. he is just so disillusioned by knighthood but he still continues to follow it despite all, and it’s really the way that his identity has been formed and given to him to wear!! from being tywin’s son, then cersei’s mirror, then the kingsguard then the kingslayer and it’s like none of these identities were made by his own hands but he wears them because they’re a role to play and that’s what he knows what to do, but then he suddenly learns to step back and craft his own identity and be whoever what he wants to be it’s like..........what are u gonna be huh!!!!! it’s like there is a mirror but the person on the other side has never been HIM till now i am going insane. and i was talking about the presence of choice being present for brienne but for jaime.........it isn’t .....not really.............not till now.

least favorite thing about them: that scene where he touched cleos’ mushy head was disgusting

favorite line: how can such a night be beautiful? he asked himself. why would the stars want to look down on such as me? which is so WAAH THE DRAMA. but it’s also the loneliness and the yearning and it’s grasping for something that he can never hold, arms outstretched to hold on to something so far away and it’s also about the celestial imagery of the stars and it’s relationship with brienne (the evenstar) and arthur dayne (star of the morning) and how those two are honorable knights but jaime is not!!! and why would they look down on someone such as him!!!! fuck.

brOTP: his relationship with tyrion ): i also like ilyn and jaime, and pia and jaime. sandor and jaime would be interesting as well since that’s like ~the two beasts~ for their respective batb

OTP: jb :\

nOTP: jaime/sansa lmao

random headcanon: jaime has a fat ass. like i know he’s canonically skinny now because of his imprisonment but you’re gonna have to pry jaime with thick thighs and fat ass away from my cold dead manicured fingernails

unpopular opinion: he’s going to live by the end <3

song i associate with them: time in a tree by raleigh ritchie

favorite picture of them: fawn’s drawing of jaime being a dilf ):

samwise

mind you i haven’t read the books so im going by the film lol

favorite thing about them: their everything <3 )):

least favorite thing about them: i dont think im allowed to say shit about sam tbh i feel like im gonna be tasered if i do

favorite line: it’s your sam!!!!!!!! and also i can’t carry it for you but i can carry you waaah

brOTP: frodo/sam

OTP: frodo/sam

nOTP: um idk

random headcanon: they’re super hot but that’s not a headcanon

unpopular opinion: nothing i love them

song i associate with them: i think how was your day? by mellow fellow fits them

favorite picture of them: this one bc it’s so cute kekeke

eowyn

favorite thing about them: they had very cute outfits honestly i think her wardrobe was my favorite out of everyone

least favorite thing about them: not enough screen time

favorite line: her iconic i am no man line ig

brOTP: eowyn and merry!

OTP: i would say with that guy she ended up with but i also dont know HOW they got together?? like 🧍

nOTP: n/a

random headcanon: idk enough about her to make hcs

unpopular opinion: i thought the aragorn one-sided romance was a bit ? lol like why are you hitting on him he already told you he got someone else

song i associate with them: king and lionheart by of monster and men ig but im not so sure and that’s so general

favorite picture of them: i haven’t seen much eowyn content to have a fave pic sorry!!

[eryiscrye]

34 for the prompts?

#34-Meeting at a Masquerade Ball

So... I uh... took liberties with the definition of short and therefore... I have put most of it under a cut. It IS shorter than a typical The Ties That Bind chapter though, so it’s still counts! I hope you enjoy 🥰 It’s also a high school AU!

When Brienne caught sight of the notices, taped onto every available locker and wall, her better judgment flew out the window and instead was replaced with the sweet stories of every single romantic fairy tale she had ever loved. It was a chance, possibly her only chance, and Brienne Tarth was going to do her best to take it. 

She didn’t have a mother or any sisters to help her find a dress, or really any friends who would help her do so either, Catelyn having graduated and gone to Winterfell University the year before, but luckily the women at the small dress boutique down by her father’s dock took pity on her and had time enough to spend hours looking for something, anything, that would give her the best chance she had at not being recognized. Because that was what it came down to. She simply couldn’t be recognized at King’s Landing High’s bi-annual ball or else it would all be over. 

She remembered the first and only other time she had attended… tried to attend one of the dances, Ronnet Connington throwing blood red roses at her feet in front of everyone before they had even entered the hall. She never wanted to feel like that again.

There were no girls at her school that were as tall as she was, but if the dress was floor length all around, she could pretend she was stumbling around in six inch stiletto heels. Her body was broad and boxy, but with the right bodice and skirt, maybe she could give the illusion that she was averagely sized and somewhat curvy. And if all else failed, at least KLH’s balls typically took place in terribly lit halls. She had once been callously told that all women were the same in the dark, but for once she hoped it were true.

Brienne smoothed her hand over the beautiful silver mask she had bought. It looked better in person than it did online and that only cemented her ideation that this was meant to be. A masquerade ball, how lucky was she that KLH’s student committee would decide upon that theme for the last ball of her high school days. The mask wouldn’t cover her entire face, but it would cover everything identifiable and unseemly about her: her nose, her lips, the giant scar on her cheek. The mask would even cover up the majority of the dirty smatterings that were her freckles, a thick layer of foundation taking care of the rest.

It would be enough. It had to be enough.

-///-///-///-

Like with every other ball since Jaime had bashed Ronnet’s teeth out of his head for humiliating her in front of everyone, he pestered her about attending this one too. They had known each other since they were kids, but that first high school dance had been the first time that he had seemed to take any real notice of her. Brienne learned the hard way that once Jaime Lannister took notice, he never didn’t again.

Well, ‘the hard way’ was putting it unkindly. He had been annoying at first, his penchant for popping up out of nowhere and incessantly teasing her grating, but eventually, when literal push had come to literal shove, he had proven to be her most loyal and closest friend. The scars on his right hand and the one on her cheek would probably bind them for life.

So it felt horrible lying to him. “I’m not going,” she said not looking up from her notes, knowing that he would instantly see the deception in her eyes.

Jaime flopped on the table beside her to try and shoot his big, puppy eyes straight into her soul. She turned ever so slightly away so that he couldn’t land a direct hit. “Come on Brienne, it’s the last one before we head off to university.”

“Good riddance.”

Jaime scowled and folded his arms beneath his head. His fists clenched, “Don’t tell me this still has to do with Connington.”

Brienne’s silence and the stiffening of her jaw was all the answer he needed.

Jaime practically growled, “Forget what that fucking useless lump of trash did. The bastard isn’t worth it. Come with me to the ball.”

For a moment Brienne imaged that he meant as his date, but he didn’t. He never did. And she needed to get her silly hopes under control before they moved in together at Riverrun University. “No, Jaime.”

“Then what will we be doing that night?”

“I’ll be helping my dad at the docks,” she lied, and hoped her father remembered to corroborate her story when Jaime inevitably pestered him, “You’ll be enjoying yourself at the dance.” At least she hoped.

Jaime frowned and poked her arm, “I’m not going to enjoy myself if you aren’t there.”

What he said was kind, although it was a blatantly untrue. “You’ve enjoyed yourself fine enough every other ball I haven’t attended.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then why do you still go?”

Jaime stayed silent.

Brienne thought so.

-///-///-///-

Jaime angrily pulled on his stupid tuxedo jacket. He had been so sure that he would be able to convince Brienne to go to at least one dance in all their high school years together, but not once had he succeeded. Even begging Selwyn to cajole her into going to this last one hadn’t worked, and Brienne’s father had simply chuckled all through out the phone call as though what Jaime had to say was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Even imploring him to give her the night off so that Jaime could at least spend it with her hadn’t touched Selwyn’s usually big, beating heart, and the man had simply told Jaime to just ‘go to the damn ball, son’. Unhelpful, everyone was being unbelievably unhelpful.

“You’re creasing everything,” Cersei said as she slid between him and the mirror with his bow tie, folded handkerchief, and cufflinks in hand, “It won’t do to look like a slob.”

“I don’t care.”

Cersei rolled her eyes so hard that it was a wonder they didn’t fall out of their sockets. “Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?” She smoothed out his outfit with several sharp tugs and stuffed the handkerchief into his suit pocket.

Jaime pursed his lips. 

One of Cersei’s eyebrows lifted in a perfect arch as she threw the tie around his still popped collar and began to tie it with deft hands, “Have you tried the simple but straight forward, ‘I love you’?”

Jaime’s lips pursed even more. No matter how many times he had tried, Brienne had always added ‘but only as a friend’ to his blatant statement or airily laughed it off as though he would say it to just anyone.

“My god,” Cersei muttered, “She’s as thick as she is stubborn.”

“Cersei…” Jaime hissed in warning.

She pulled the bow taught, flipped down his collar, and patted his chest, “Not an insult. Wouldn’t want you to do to me what you did to the soccer team. Does she even know?” Cersei moved on to doing up his cuffs. His twin sister always had a knack for making him feel like an overgrown child.

“No,” Jaime muttered. The moment he had heard of the bet, he had put everyone involved in their place. No one in the world deserved to have that happen to them, much less sweet, softhearted Brienne.

“Do you think she’s going to finally show up this time?” Cersei asked, a smirk curling on her lips, “Give you a chance to finally sweep her off her feet.”

“Fuck off.”

“Because if you’re going to be in a mood all night, again, I’m not associating myself with you any further,” she straightened out both his sleeves, took a step back and nodded. 

Jaime frowned. He hadn’t told anyone. He had definitely not told his sister, but still she knew that the only reason he still attended these damn balls was on the off chance that Brienne would decide to show up last minute and he could finally, finally, show her how he felt. It was stupid, but he loved those fairy tales too and hoped that maybe if he told her he loved her at a damn ball, she would finally fucking believe him. But knowing that there was no chance Brienne was going to be coming at all tonight… well… what was even the point?

Cersei sighed as she picked up the mask he had chosen for the night, “Blue really isn’t your colour.”

“I resent that.”

She set the mask down, “And you’re an idiot.” Cersei swept out of the room.

-///-///-///-

Brienne entered the hall, her nerves making her stumble at the threshold, even in her flats. At least she didn’t have to fake wearing stiletto heels. 

As she had hoped, the whole place was lit quite poorly with splashes of purple and blue light mainly hitting and reflecting off the walls and spotlights only scattered here and there. Music reverberated through the air, overpowering the din of mingled conversation. The songs being played were a mix of pop melodies that were easy to dance to and waltz’s that carried the theme of the night. People were dancing everywhere, scattered among the conversations and tables filled with food and drink, rather than just on the dance floor, and it made the entire event feel somewhat surreal.

Some of the students she could identify quickly even with their masks on, Cersei Lannister’s shining golden ringlets and signature blood red lipstick making her prominent among the population, but most of the rest were like strangers in a crowd. She hoped she looked like a stranger too. 

Cersei’s hair standing out so much in the dim lights of the hall gave her hope that it wouldn’t be so hard to find the one person she wanted to find. She just wanted to have one dance with him before the stroke of midnight came and they would live the rest of their lives out as the best of friends. It would hurt to see him date and bring back to their apartment girls he would assuredly meet and fall in love with in university, but at least she would always have tonight. That was, if she could find him.

It took her nearly an hour and unlike where she thought he would be, surrounded by guys and girls, laughing and enjoying the night under one of the glowing spotlights, she found him alone, standing in the shadows. 

Nervously, she moved towards him. At her approach he instinctively seemed to recoil, and Brienne swallowed uneasily. Did he recognize her? Was he waiting for someone? She thought that he would have been happy to see a friend even if he did recognize her. Well there was only one way to find out. 

“Um excuse me,” she murmured, her voice muffled and altered by her mask, “Would you like to dance?”

Jaime huffed, “Sorry, I’m no—” and then he turned towards her and seemed surprised that he had to look up, “I…” His eyes met hers, then sparked and glowed. “I would.”

Brienne couldn’t help but smile, her disguise had worked.

-///-///-///-

He had nearly bailed last minute, thinking that it would be better to just mope on the couch and text Brienne constantly until she just angrily called him. Then, maybe, he could at least lure her into chatting with him all through the night. 

His little brother was the only reason he hadn’t though. Cersei wouldn’t lift a finger to protect him and Jaime knew that high school was liable to try and hurt him as much as it had hurt Brienne. Teenagers were ruthless, but especially so on the night of KLH’s bi-annual balls.  

About five minutes after they had arrived though, his protective instincts were all deemed pointless. Unlike Brienne, Tyrion had a penchant for making friends, even if they were minorly unsavory ones, and he was off doing whatever he had planned to do. Jaime leaned against the wall, enjoying the slight anonymity his mask gave him even if he wasn’t enjoying anything else. At least he didn’t have to spend the whole night turning down dances from every girl who only saw the Lannister heir or his handsome looks. 

About an hour after arriving, Jaime considered going home, changing into something comfortable and joining Brienne at the docks despite her and her father’s protestations. If there was no chance that she was coming, he would have much rather spent the night with her, trying desperately to tell her, again, how he felt. It was silly, he knew. He would have a million more chances, but it almost seemed wrong to move in with her before making his feelings utterly clear. If she didn’t feel the same way, wouldn’t his pining just one bedroom away bother her?

He heard the swish of skirts before he saw them and prepared himself to reject the girl. There was only one person he had wanted to dance with tonight. 

“Um excuse me.” She sounded so nervous and so familiar. His heart beat loudly in his chest and he looked away. He already felt bad for rejecting her outright, but there was just no other way. “Would you like to dance?”

Jaime sighed, “Sorry, I’m no—“ and then he turned to look her in the face as he dismissed her and found that he had to tilt his chin up to meet her eyes. Her eyes. “I…” Brienne’s eyes. Oh god. Brienne was here! Brienne was asking him to dance. He scrambled for the only answer, “I would!”

Her eyes sparkled in a way that told him she was smiling, even though he couldn’t see the majority of her face and he wondered why it was she had chosen such a ridiculous mask. It hid all of the unique and precious features of her: her nose, her lips, her cheek.

Jaime’s eyes narrowed as he reached his unscarred hand up to brush against the only section of exposed skin. “Come on, then,” he managed to say as he pulled her out of the shadows and into a little stream of light. When he looked at her again, he realized that it hadn’t just been a trick of the darkness, she had covered all her darling freckles under a heavy layer of make up. Jaime swallowed as he beheld her. Did she think…? No. Impossible.

She looked nervous now, under the light, “Maybe we should dance over there,” she said, and pointed at the shadows. 

Oh gods, she did. “No,” Jaime said with force, “Here suits me fine.” He took her hand and pulled her in, wrapping his arm around her waist.

Brienne gasped at his touch and he wondered if she was blushing. He couldn’t tell. And he hated it. 

As they danced, Jaime wondered if he should tell her he knew who she was. It was obvious that she thought she had to hide herself from him, but he just couldn’t, for the life of him, fathom why. But as she tightened her grip on him and they leaned closer and closer as one song ended and another began, he found that he cared less and less so long as she was in his arms. 

He nuzzled the hair at her temple and she sighed happily. He decided that instant, and without hesitation, that she had to know he knew it was her. “Brienne,” he murmured into her ear, and held her tighter as she jerked in his arms. 

“How did you…?”

“Did you really think I could ever mistake you for someone else?” Jaime asked.

Brienne quivered, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—“

“I only said yes because I knew it was you.”

He let her draw away from him just enough so that they could see each other’s faces. “What?” she asked, softly, “Why?” her voice even more tender.

Jaime smiled at her, then lifted and span her mask so that instead of covering her face, it shielded them from the rest of the world. He was relieved to see that she hadn’t covered the rest of her freckles. His scarred hand went to brush her scarred cheek. “I’ve been waiting for you.” He leaned and kissed her.

[ddagent]

Okay okay yes I will 100% prompt New New Amsterdam au first meeting in future preferably?

I honestly have no idea if this is any good. It’s my first fic post-flu, and my sinus infection does not seem to be getting any better. But here we are. Also: this is more Forever than New Amsterdam because I’ve got another immortal!Jaime idea on the books and I wanted to write something a little different. But I hope you enjoy all the same! 

Jaime Lannister was dead. Not for the first time. 

In truth, the former knight had long since stopped keeping count of his deaths; six hundred years of immortality and a smart mouth had racked up the numbers. Jaime remembered his first, in the belly of the Red Keep, and he remembered the most painful. This one wouldn’t even make the top one hundred: there was a woman, a mugger, a knife. Pain, blood, and a weightless feeling as the life left him and his body vanished into thin air. Only for him to be reborn, as he always was, where it began. 

Only now the dungeons of the Red Keep was an apartment complex, and the specific spot he died was a fountain. 

“Maiden save me, that man’s not wearing any clothes!”

Oh, and every time he was reborn, he emerged naked. 

Stepping out of the fountain, Jaime shook his damp hair and waved at the startled woman with his right arm as his only hand covered his cock. This wasn’t the first time he’d been reborn in the fountain; nor would it be his last. Thankfully, he’d started stashing clothes in the courtyard, and a phone so he could call Ty for a pick-up. Rebirth meant no clothes, no phone, no prosthetic hand. Just Jaime Lannister in his nameday suit. 

Today, he made it two steps before the gates to the courtyard opened, and two gold cloaks entered. Well, fuck. “Ser, ser, if you could come with us please?”

Which was how Jaime found himself wrapped in a blanket and bundled in the back of a patrol car. Again. Six hundred years of immortality meant he had seen more, done more than he ever had in his first lifetime. He’d travelled as far as Mereen and seen beyond the Wall. He’d worked as a sailor, a bodyguard, and even forged chains at the Citadel. He’d buried three children and two siblings, and had loved – truly – only once. As far as being stabbed in a mugging and arrested for public indecency, this was just an ordinary day. 

Booking, spare clothes, questioned by Officer Swann. Jaime practically yawned. “Name?”

“Jaime Hill.” Even now, the name Lannister meant something. He’d never used it; not since his first life. “Detective Jaime Hill. I work in homicide.”

Officer Swann stiffened. “You woke for Chief Redwyne.”  

“I’m her top man,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “And, as I told you back at the complex, I have a tendency to sleepwalk. Won’t you look a fool, arresting King’s Landing’s top homicide detective just because he walks in his sleep.” 

“You were naked.”

Jaime shrugged. “I don’t care for pyjamas, what more can I say?”

Officer Swann pursed his lips, rose from his chair and discussed options with the other gold cloak who’d brought him in. Jaime just tapped his fingertips against the desk as he waited for them to make the right decision and let him go. Eventually, Officer Swann came back to him. 

“You’re free to go, Detective Hill. I’ll see if I can’t get the Beauty to drive you home.” 

“The Beauty?” 

Swann barked out a laugh. “Officer Payne. She’s new to the precinct.” 

A name was called; a figure in the corner of the bullpen turned around. And at that moment all the air left his body, yet Jaime was not reborn. He just sat, transfixed, as the spitting image of Brienne of Tarth crossed the room to join him. He’d forgotten many things of his first life, but the Stranger had given him one more torment, and that was never being able to forget her face. Officer Payne was just as tall, as broad. Her eyes were the same shade of blue; her blonde hair longer and pulled into a ponytail. Gods, even her scowl was the same. 

“I wasn’t staring,” he said, when both of them knew he had been. “I mean, I was, but only because you look like someone I went to university with.”

Beside them, Swann just chuckled. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone. Officer Payne will drive you home, Detective.” 

Swann may have missed the eye roll, but Jaime certainly didn’t. Brienne – Officer Payne – walked him across the bullpen without a word, and Jaime kept his own lip zipped until they were out of earshot. “I can only assume you must be a better driver than they are.”

“Better gold cloak. They can’t stomach the competition.” She didn’t meet his gaze as they left the precinct. “Where am I taking you?” 

“Lion Antiquities. My—” Great-however-many-nephew. “—my friend owns the store; I live above it.”

"Fine.”

Not another word was exchanged between them as they settled in Officer Payne’s squad car. The hour had grown late; the streets quiet. Officer Payne maintained the speed limit and stopped for every red light. Jaime almost laughed; this was exactly how the honourable Ser Brienne of Tarth would drive had she ever lived this long. No, she’d died centuries ago. But Officer Payne was her mirror. For a moment, Jaime leaned back against the leather seat and settled himself to the sound of her breathing. He’d long forgotten her voice, or the sounds she made whilst fighting or fucking, but the sound of Officer Payne breathing made him feel safe for the first time in six hundred years. 

“What’s your name?” No answer. “I’m Jaime Hill; homicide detective.” Still nothing. “A passenger has a right to know his driver’s name.” 

A long, withered sigh. “Brienne Payne.” 

Fuck. She was even called Brienne. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Six hundred years and the Gods had created someone with her features, with parents who had given her the name of the first female knight. Fuck, there was even a miniature Oathkeeper hanging from the rearview mirror; other gold cloaks might have fuzzy dice, but this Officer had a miniature Valyrian sword. Do you realise, Brienne Payne, how much you look like her? 

“Do you like working as an officer?” he asked instead. “Chief Redwyne is always looking for good detectives.” 

“I’m not interested in handouts.” 

Jaime huffed. “I’m not–I’m just asking. You seem—”

“—a car ride together where I’m practically your chauffeur is not a firm representation of my investigative skills.” Brienne Payne tapped her indicator. “Whatever you want in exchange for your recommendation, you can keep it.”

“Brienne—” and, oh, how good it felt to say that name again.

“—we’re here.”

And so they were. Lion Antiquities; Ty (short for Tyrion, another mirror) busy inside haggling with a customer. Brienne Payne didn’t open his door or offer another word – not even to scold him. She just kept two hands upon the wheel and two eyes upon the road and let Jaime step out. He watched her, though, until the taillights from her patrol car blinked around the corner. In his many years, Jaime had struggled to understand his purpose; of why he had been granted immortality. Maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with Brienne Payne. 

He’d certainly be seeing more of her, of that Jaime was very sure. 

--

Brienne pulled her squad car into the first layby along from Lion Antiquities. Her fingers fumbled with the ignition, and then there was nothing but the sound of her own breathing. Rough, ragged breaths that Brienne drew into her lungs. After a few minutes, she reached for her phone. Tapped in her pin, found her contacts, and pressed call. It took a few rings, but her call was answered. 

“Brienne? It’s late. Is everything all right?”

“I’m sorry to call so late, Cat, but I—” Brienne of Tarth sighed. “I’ve just met the spitting image of Jaime Lannister.”

[shipping-receiving]

Trivia Tuesday: Some Notes on Full Spectrum

I’m not sure if I’ll return to this story anytime soon, so I thought I’d share a little about what I wish I had done differently, and what I might do if I ever continue it.

First of all, I have to confess that I basically winged it when it came to the plot. The novel on which I based the story has an incredibly elaborate universe, so I needed to figure out how to condense that. Plus, the novel was meant to be the first in a trilogy, but the latter two books have never been published, so I had to make up or gloss over a few things as I went along. Regardless, I knew I wanted seven chapters (seven colours, Seven Kingdoms etc.), so I started off with the chapter titles using idioms/sayings that fit those seven colours. 

The first chapter I wrote was Chapter 4: The Grass is Always Greener (i.e. Jaime and Brienne banging in the meadows of Tarth while tripping on colour), then Chapters 1–3 after that, all while praying that the solution for Chapters 5–7 would just magically come to me. At the end of July my outline for Chapter 7 was still: LOL IDK THEY'VE FALLEN IN LOVE IN A DYSTOPIA NOW WHAT?! So there are a ton of things that I would have changed or included if I had… you know, actually planned everything properly beforehand.

Anyway, some hopes, regrets, questions, and headcanons after the cut:

What I would write assuming the current version stays as it is:

Ideally – though I seriously doubt my abilities to pull this off given the amount of anxiety I experienced regarding all the plot conundrums in this story – I would love to write a trilogy of seven-chapter stories. Seeing as the first focuses on uncovering the conspiracies, the second would involve more political manoeuvring culminating in some sort of revolution, and the third might be… post-apocalyptic? Maybe? Or at least taking place in a kind of unstable version of the new social order.

The second act would also involve a Stoneheart plot, once they make contact with the resistance. This would explore how the Starks’ Purple perception was taken away, and what they know about the Wildfire Protocol.

Along those lines, I’d probably need to figure out J and B’s relationship arcs for the second and third acts. I suppose the most straightforward would be to have her pregnant for the second part, and there’s a time jump in the third part so they already have at least one kid.

I am toying with the idea of writing that epistolary interlude I mentioned at the end of the story. The fic would be entirely composed of sexy letters between Jaime and Brienne while she’s on Tarth (perhaps she’s stuck there for a month or two), but Jaime reveals some of what’s happening with the Council and she discusses what she’s found out from the Stark girls. I was even thinking of hiding the sensitive information in the sexy stuff – code, invisible ink, something like that – so each letter between them might actually have a second letter embedded in it.

I really love the idea of the Wildfire swatch being ‘planted’ all over King’s Landing, not to “burn them all”, but rather as a mass exposure of everyone to the Wildfire Protocol and the ability to see in natural colour. I don’t know how this could be done safely, given the addictive qualities of colour and the general chaos this would cause, but I like the subversion of canon!Wildfire. It might be the grand gesture to trigger a revolution.

*sigh* I might have to write about Shae betraying them. It’s why I tried to be careful to mention that there is hardly any way for her to know that the Stark girls are the Stark girls (it’s not like she can see Sansa’s red hair anyway), even though they stayed at her house for a couple of nights. It’s just so I could keep them protected if I have to.

Now, here’s some parallels with canon that I would make space for if I overhauled the story and turned it into a longfic:

I’d find a way to do Enemies to Lovers instead of Strangers to Lovers. My fics tend to work with the latter, so I’d want to challenge myself in that way. It’ll give me more time to develop the characters and the world as well. In that vein:

I would want to figure out a way for Jaime to be known as the Kingslayer or some equivalent, which would establish animosity between him and Brienne from the get-go. Also:

I would actually write in some form of twincest, though this would likely have ended by the time Cersei marries Robert. The idea of Jaime and Cersei having the exact same Purple perception and seeing the world in the same way (and differently from everyone else) is really ripe for exploring their dynamic and how it became toxic. It’s possible that this dynamic never became (fully) sexual, given the fact that the Colour Perception Test can also function as a kind of rough paternity test, but I think it would make for some great dialogue between Jaime and Brienne as he confronts that past. (I really wanted to write this back when I was planning for this story to switch between Brienne’s POV and Jaime’s, but it became clear that I wouldn’t be able to resolve this comfortably in seven chapters, since I prefer to give the characters time to process.)

By extension, I’m thinking about what it means to “see the world with the same eyes” – and how in canon, Cersei and Brienne are meant to be mirrors of Jaime in vastly different ways. There’s a lot to mine there in terms of Colour Perception (the vision one is born with) vs. World View (the values one cultivates). There’s also some space here for thinking about beauty as being seen vs. the act of looking.

JAIME’S GODDAMN HAND. I never explained how he lost his fingers because… I don’t know. I assume in some kind of accident during one of his scrap colour expeditions. But since its loss is so symbolic in canon, I would want to find a proper parallel for this. Perhaps he loses an eye instead?

And here’s elements from the original novel (Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde) that I would expand upon:

I’d need to better explain the Chromatic Hierarchy and how it works within the context of a feudal system. Or at least have it make more sense in my head. In the original novel, I think it was intentionally meant to be rotational in some way so certain families couldn’t centralise power for more than a few generations, but perhaps I’ll need to tweak it further to make it fit Westeros.

The original novel had a ‘central government’ called National Colour, which I replaced with the Ultraviolet Council without really having a clue how that might work. Are they a fully functioning government with a civil service? How does that work with a pseudo-feudal system – local/state and central/federal governments?

I might also want to expand on the merit system, which has much higher stakes in the original novel – if you lose enough merits, you’re sent to Reboot (thus far unexplained in the source material). It’s a means of regulating behaviour that I chose to push to the background, but I think there’s potential here for Brienne to lose faith in a ‘moral code’. Reboot could also be the official story for why the Starks were pushed out, rather than relying on the ‘diluted Purple’ narrative.

On that note, I should probably delve a bit more into how scrap colour works, and the whole economy surrounding it. In the original novel, it’s implied that scrap is basically artificially-coloured relics/trash from the past world (our world).

[ginmo]

Hey Ginmo, you mentioned previously that you don’t think Brienne and Jaime will meet up with LSH. What is your theory on what could happen?

I think a part of Brienne’s arc is to be challenged with dilemmas of oath keeping and honor. Jaime starts his journey expressing how it’s near impossible to stick to oaths and honor if you’re thrown into a position where it takes two situations and pits them against one another, making the knight choose which is the more honorable route. No matter what, the person is in conflict, and some honor is sacrificed. There’s no right or wrong answer for what the most honorable choice would be. Jaime is also “the things I do for love” and... so is Brienne.  

I’m going to copy and paste an answer I gave from a response about getting a Brienne POV in TWOW. 

“They have parallel arcs. Both of them ran from being heir to pledge their life away to a KG, because it was the only way they could be close to the person they loved. They both have arcs that are driven by love and explore honor. Jaime has been inspired by Brienne’s belief in honor, and Jaime is challenging Brienne on the grey areas of oath keeping, and what it means to be honorable. I think a main reason why LSH even exists is so that Brienne is challenged with a similar dilemma that Jaime had faced.” 

In a way, the person Brienne pledged her sword to went “mad,” so I believe she’ll be confronted with a situation that mirrors Jaime and Aerys. In a different way, though, of course. BUT... I’m not sure it’ll happen right away. I think Brienne is coming up with a plan, whether she already had one when she got Jaime, or if she’ll figure it out as they travel to where ever. 

Since their arcs kinda go in reverse, then it’s not a stretch to assume Brienne will have a Mad King moment where she kills LSH with, ironically, Oathkeeper.

He would not use the Maid against a mortal man, for she was so potent as to make any fight unfair. - BRIENNE, AFFC

Another reason why I don’t think they’ll go straight to LSH is because of what GRRM said 

Lady Stoneheart does have a role in the books. Whether it’s sufficient or interesting enough… I think it is, or I wouldn’t have put her in. One of the things I wanted to show with her is that the death she suffered changes you.

I had discussions about what way we should go in, I would always favor sticking with the books, while they would favor making changes. I think one of the biggest ones would probably be when they made the decision not to bring Catelyn Stark back as Lady Stoneheart. That was probably the first major diversion of the show from the books and, you know, I argued against that, and David and Dan made that decision.

In the book, characters can be resurrected. After Catelyn is resurrected as Lady Stoneheart, she becomes a vengeful, heartless killer. In the sixth book, I still continue to write her. She is an important character in the set of books. [Keeping her character] is the change I most wish I could make in the [show].

But if LSH was around just for Brienne to deliver Jaime and have her Mad King moment, then I think GRRM would be more understanding as to why they made the decision to cut, and she wouldn’t be viewed as a “major diversion.” LSH is going to have a much wider impact as a “vengeful, heartless killer,” which means Jaime and Brienne aren’t going to get to her before she fucks shit up in a big way (some people theorize a possible Red Wedding 2.0).

Jaime and Brienne have also been missing for several weeks now. LSH is still “alive,” which means a) Brienne hasn’t killed her b) Jaime isn’t dead or else the death of the Kingslayer would have for sure gotten around by now and c) LSH still hasn’t had that big impact on the story that would make her “the first major diversion.” 

“But if she doesn’t go to LSH then Pod and Hyle will die!” I don’t find it stretch to think Brienne would be put in situation that really darkens her character, and I could see that moment being Brienne not returning for Pod and Hyle to keep Jaime away from LSH. 

“She said sword when Hyle and Pod were swinging” 

Yes, and she also probably realized that LSH won’t stop until Jaime is dead, so there’s literally no point for her to sacrifice herself in that moment if they continue to go after Jaime, because then all four of them would be dead anyway. Going to Jaime she may even be trying to come up with a plan to save them as well, but then makes the difficult decision to sacrifice them. Maybe she even does go back, and finds out that the two of them are dead, that LSH kept them hanging.

At the S4 premiere:

Interviewer: Is there any character who is morally beyond reproach?

GRRM: Beyon reproach? You mean like good, so good? Probably not. 

Interviewer: I was thinking Brienne.

GRRM: Maybe, yes, certainly. She’s up there. She’s very idealistic. At least in the beginning, but you know her journey still has a way to go, and my world has a way of testing one’s ideals, so we’ll see by the end. 

Brienne killing LSH would be grey in the sense that it causes Brienne to kill the woman she pledged her sword to, but I feel like GRRM is hinting that he’s going to darken her up a bit more, just like Jaime. 

Jaime killed the Mad King to save innocents. 

Brienne kills LSH to save innocents. 

Jaime pushed a child out the window as an act of love to save his family.

Brienne may sacrifice a child to save the man she loves. 

What do I think Brienne’s plan may be?

My mind changes every day haha. I feel it strongly in my gut that the Quiet Isle has to come into play in some form for Brienne. I’m thinking maybe they go there to heal from whatever, or to go there to rest and formulate a plan for what to do next. Maybe they even join up with the Hound to go look for Sansa?

I also think there’ll be angst and conflict with Jaime, since he abandoned his men, and Tommen is in KL. But I’m starting to think that there is some truth to Brienne’s lie, in that she is going to Sansa, but she’s saving Jaime from the BWB and LSH by getting him to help her find Sansa. If Jaime is with Brienne in her mission to find her, she can protect him. She could be thinking that if they both find Sansa and bring her to LSH, then maybe LSH will have mercy, proving to her that Jaime is not the man she thought he was. Whether they find Sansa or not LSH won’t be kind though lol so Brienne will still most likely kill her. 

[nossbean]

Myrcella / Sansa Anon Here: Like Jaime and Brienne are both Beauty and the Beast, Myrcella and Sansa have the potential to be both Cinderella and the Prince/Knight. Myrcella a bastard disguised as a Princess and Sansa is a Princess disguises as a bastard. When the Starks fell, the old man could have written Myrcella as one of Sansa’s Protectors since she knows how to survive Cersei while when the Lannister’s fell from power, Sansa would give Myrcella a home. For cherry on top, Myrcella could 1/2

2/2 inherit Jaime’s sword skills and her desire to pursue that could be a way to escape being her mother’s mini-me, only valued for her looks, and toxic family as well as an attempt to gain some control over her life. I had more articulate thoughts on this but I wrote them down somewhere I can’t recall. In canon, you already have Arianne set up for the fairy godmother role and Brienne as a subversion of the typical stepmother. Either way, less creepy than any potential in-canon Sansa ships.

Honestly, anon, you persuaded me with these first two, but the absolute joy is that you came through with even more! I do wanna quickly say though that I support folx shipping who they ship and in whatsoever way brings joy, we’re all here for the love of the characters and the story after all <3

I am as ever at the moment, very late to the party, but I’m so glad you came back to share all this! A lot of what you’ve said by way of potentials has lived rent free in my head. I’m very into the fairy tale elements you’re describing (particularly noting Arianne as fairy godmother, and Brienne as a subversion of the typical (boring, sexist) fairy tale stepmother...!) and the incorporation of major themes that could be present in Myrcella’s arc (I’m poss wearing my clown shoes, etc, but I do think there’s a chance some of those could come to bear in the remaining books, with or without Sansa, so let’s hope) Your note about Myrcella inheriting Jaime’s sword skills set off a different thought in my head, that it would be interesting for her to instead pick up a lot of the knight’s code and utilizing it to her whims and needs, though without the fighting/sword skills element. There’s resonance and balancing there, then, with parts of Sansa’s arc, and also with themes in Brienne’s arc, and is again, a repudiation of much of what Cersei (and Joffrey) thinks and believes. Though am also very much here for more sword wielding ladies.

Anyway, onwards with the rest of your Sansa/Myrcella galaxy-braining:

Also, we know Myrcella wasn’t scared of Joffrey so we could have had Myrcella getting in his face to defend Sansa and having a tense stand-off. Plus, it would be a more explicit sign of Jaime and Cersei not being soulmates and gender swapped mirrors as the cruel and cowardly Joffrey being Cersei if she was a boy and brave and clever would be Jaime as a girl.

ANON. I am SO INTO playing with aligning Cersei with Joffrey and Jaime with Myrcella explicitly! It definitely could be there for the taking (that note about where did Myrcella and Tommen get their sweetness, I WONDER) but whether GRRM will take it... Things seem to be pointing Tommen-ward atm when it comes to possibilities with Jaime and his children, which is, idk, to be expected to a degree I guess. BUT ALSO, as is on the record, I’d really rather a sharp veer towards Myrcella instead (Tommen can come too I guess but centring Myrcella would be grand)

And also just: a Myrcella who takes on her brother (and by extension, Cersei) *on behalf* of Sansa would have been fucking incredible, and would absolutely have been particularly satisfying for the resonance it would have for Jaime’s later arc. And there’s every possibility Myrcella could have stood up for Sansa, or even if we frame it more as “against Joffrey”, at least at first. Also what you describe as being possible later by way of role reversal of who protects who, yes thank you please. Deeply into how that shapes Lannister-Stark relations and also honestly the potential impact on LSH storylines, in the event Sansa meets LSH in around the same time Brienne and Jaime are confronting her (I mean, that would substantially alter the timelines, possibly, but still!) 

Also ALSO, Sansa being sapphic would better show the limits societal scripts have a person’s perceptions, agency, and ability to connect with others since her character is so influenced by storytelling, imagination, and societal roles. It would also expand her understanding of womanhood and femininity, paving the way to reconcile with Arya.

Into this, as well! Don’t really have much more to say than that, really XD Oh, only that Sapphic Sansa is very satisfying to say, hehe. Anon, I ask if you’ve read this excellent meta about Sansa? It’s a long read but a good one. 

admittedly, Myrcella did luck out with getting the sweet, age appropriate, and non-creepy Trystane Martell as her canon love interest.

My cynical take here is that it isn’t coincidence that Myrcella lucked out with Trystane being sweet and being part of a family who (mostly?) wants her safe and happy not just because of her proximity to the Iron Throne but for her own sake, only to be almost certain to lose him, heh.

Sansa/Myrcella it could be about forgiveness, chosen families, breaking the cycles of violence and revenge, hope for the future, the importance of female solidarity, re-writing the future to include everyone.

Just here to say I am a sucker for each and every one of these themes, thank you.

Physical doubling is another shared feature of both Myrcella and Sansa’s stories. Everyone comments on how much Sansa looks like her mom and Littlefinger plans to unveil her identity using her red hair. Myrcella also looks like her mom and has a double in her cousin. Both are hurt and almost killed while in care of someone they should trust, Myrcella during the Queenmaker plot and Sansa with her Aunt Lysa.

Sansa’s themes of identity, self-preservation, perception, longing for something beyond your childhood home, the power and consequences of shaping stories through truth and lies can easily be mapped onto Myrcella.

Your Jaime and Myrcella post reawakened my dormant interest in Myrcella and Sansa, since Jaime is tasked with returning Sansa.

Again, mostly am just here for all this, particularly the potential theme sharing and how they could help one another through 😍🤩

Reading all this, I feel like you hit on one of the major things that GRRM fails with on the regular in ASOIAF, which is that women and girls... often like one another? Even when they’re, like, different from one another? 😱😱😱 And even if he didn’t want to pursue a shippy route, to your earlier point, there was plenty of room for friendship and solidarity between Sansa and Myrcella when they were both in KL, even with Myrcella being younger. There could be an added element wherein Myrcella goes behind Cersei’s back somewhat to do this, given Cersei would undoubtedly put the kibosh on it had she been aware - which again, would have had resonance later for that Jaime and Myrcella mirroring angle. Buuut that would require GRRM to recognize the power of relationships between girls and women, and I admit I remain stuck on the idea that apparently no woman or girl in Brienne’s life ever did anything but mock/deride her until Catelyn came along. I invite you to imagine that a small part of my soul is always howling to the heavens: NO ONE????????? (though this is, happily, an easily retconned detail, so my clown nose is honking that there may be even a throwaway note about some girl or woman in Brienne’s past in Winds, anyway, I digress)

I DUNNO, I’m trying to, like, contribute to this excellence but mostly I’m just picking up everything you’re putting down...! 

And finally:

I don’t have a Tumblr, though I enjoy reading fic and people’s meta, so I forgot I sent that ask to be honest, haha.

Again, I’m sorry for how very, very late here, but I am so very glad you did...!!!!

[norringtondeservestheworld]

In the past days, there was a poll on Twitter for the best Game of Thrones couple. The options were Jaime & Cersei, Daenerys & Jon Snow, Arya & Gendry and obviously Jaime & Brienne. I used Twitter just once on 2012 I think (that’s why after all this, I deleted it)?? but I decided to log to vote. Not that my vote was needed, since Braime was winning with the 65%.  Anyway, I noticed that every Braime comment got a replied by a Twincest shipper who, in a very mature way, posted photos with fishes that mock the Braime Kiss.

Moreover, a different Twincest shipper and a Braime one started to debate, the first claiming that Jaime loved Cersei and it’s canon and the second claiming he returned to her because of the child. And I decided to share my opinion, as diplomatically as possible, because I didn’t want argue. I just wanted to saywhat I thought. So, in a very respectful way, I explained my point of view. Here what I said.

When the poll ended with the victory of Jaime and Brienne, I started to get a lot of replies from a lot of Twincest shippers (probably pissed for Braime winning), but instead of comment what I said, they simply attacked me and insulted me. And the more I was nice and respectul, the more they were offensive. That’s why I posted some of the things I wrote. Because I want to prove that I have always been respectful and the only thing I was doing was explaining my point of view. Unlike them. Here what they said.

And when I bring them evidence that even Jaime and Cersei’s actors prefer Jaime and Brienne to Jaime and Cersei, they can’t stop insulting me, as If they are able to speak only using insults.

“Cyberbullying is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else.” Yes, I know it’s not a serious form of Cyberbullying since there weren’t threats of death like sometimes happens on these situations, but all of this happened in a couple of hours. I got like 3-4 replies from different bullies for every comment I made (there were that much and I read some comments not before the ending of all this) And the fact that they passed so quickly to insult someone in just few hours without a logical reason made me realize what was happening. So yeah, still Cyberbullying for me. You know, when I was younger and I was still going to school, some of my classmates mocked me all the time because I was a tomboy. I didn’t wear make up, I didn’t take care of my hair and my appearance as other girls did (and one of them told me that nobody would have wanted me) and one of my best friends was mocked too, because he got weight because of a tonsil operation he had. I didn’t consider it bullying at the time because I was naive, and because I thought it was my fault. They never passed a line and they never did anything of pshysical towards us, but they still hurted our feelings, because we both were more fragile. Now I am different person. I am matured. I’m still a tomboy who doesn’t wear make up, but I don’t care about other people’s opinion (except of the people I truly respect) so this behavior doesn't hurt me anymore. So when I read these insults towards me, I didn’t feel hurted. I was just.. confused? I simply didn’t understand how expressing an opinion would lead to this. At first, I thought I was wrong to comment in the first place, that I shouldn’t have done that, but then I thought “wait.. I did nothing wrong. All I did was sharing my point of view and I have always been respectful towards them. I never said a single word against them, while the only thing they did was insulting me instead of read what I wrote.” So these insults didn’t touched me. I am not perfect, but I am happy of who I am. I can look myself at the mirror without feeling ashamed. But as I said, I haven’t always been like this. If this happened years ago, probably I would be hurted. But now I am a different person, and probably the mocking at high school helped me and made me stronger enough to understand it. So I stopped paying attention to what they wrote to me refusing myself to read all the comments I didn’t see the first time and blocking them because I understood what was really happening and who was wrong in that situation. But what would have happened if there had been a younger and more easily influenced person in my place? Someone who can't stop reading and being deeply hurted by every comment? Someone who could start believing they deserve all this hatred? There are people out there more fragile and sadder than me because of something bad that is happening in their life and other problems, and these kind of bullying towards them could be very dangerous. PEOPLE DIE BECAUSE OF IT. It feels strange to talk about something so personal like my past on internet, but I wanted to say all of this, because we need to stop to confuse a simple childishness with Cyberbullying/bullying. 

Everyone who is or was bullied/cyberbullied that now is reading this post, I want you to know that YOU MATTER. YOU ARE IMPORTANT. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF. It doesn’t matter what they say to you, it doesn’t matter if you answer them asking to stop or simply cry for hours, if you did nothing wrong towards them or you just been kind and respectful, YOU will always be the BETTER PERSON at the end of the day, and THEY will be the ones that one day they’ll have to deal with their actions. I never did nothing towards my classmates, but I still got mocked. I’ve been respectful on the internet towards other people and their opinion, but I still been cyberbullied. That’s why I did this post, with both my comments and their comments. To show you that not matter how respecful and nice you are, because bullies don’t want to have a debate with you. The only thing they want is hurt you because you are a better person than them. People who act that way are rotten inside. Don’t let their rot reach you.

Everyone who is a bully who acted on this way on the internet or in real life, towards a stranger or someone they know, that now is reading this post, you are a disgusting person for having fun mocking someone else and hurting real people. You think to be big and strong to insult someone hiding in your home behind your PC? The only thing you’ll get with this behaivour is infecting your soul and making your victims stronger. Oh, get the fuck off my blog. I don’t want you here. Oh, and I want to be clear. This isn’t about Twincest shippers being bad and Braime shippers being good. This is about garbage people harassing other people because they are that petty to be unable to deal with a different opinion and because they are empty inside. This post talked about them because it’s what happened to me. If we switch things and it was the Braime shippers being bullies against Twincest shippers, it would be disgusting in the same way. I have no problems with Twincest shippers. I have problems with Twincest shippers acting this way and bullying others. It doesn’t matter the ship. It doesn’t matter the topic.  DON’T. FUCKING. BULLY. PEOPLE.

[wickedjaime]

For the writing meme, would love a POV answer from our world hollow!

POV switch from Myrcella to Jaime for my fic, our world hollow:

Her moon’s blood was on her. Jaime knew. He always knew. Always saw the unbidden cradling of her belly, the tenseness of her frame, the unsettling half-bred color of panic and numbness that took her eyes. Always heard her voice, in his head. I shall grow fat and vicious, she had told him, laughing as only a Lannister could, after she’d given him the news. But at least I’ll be spared bleeding for near on a year. 

She’d been given blood after it, though. Flesh, too, smashed, splattered, splayed across her son and his. Jaime had vowed to himself that he would have another son, and hold him, but he had always been an oathbreaker. So he’d only had a grandson to hold, and even him not for half a breath before Elia’s vengeance reigned upon him. He could not save Aegon or Rhaenys, nor Tommen or Jaros. He’d held them both—once, twice, a hundred times, an eon, a breath. Not enough. Never enough.

He had not carried them in his belly, though. Did not feel them inside him, growing, moving, conquering as lions do. Did not know the emptiness of a womb after birth, the feeling of weeping milk for a babe that was too buried beneath the gold of Casterly Rock to whimper and reach for it, too ripped in half to drink. Did not know the pain of being betrayed by his body with every full moon that passed, reminded of what he’d lost. 

He could feed her, though. Give her his share of the hunts. Do the hunting, as slow as it would take. Not wake her at the earliest hour. He could be kind to her, and not snap at her scowls and sullen silences, the rage that made her look like Cersei, even with her missing ear and severed cheek. He could be as gentle as he’d seen Ned Stark be, with his daughters. For all the self-righteous cunt the man had been, no one could deny he had been a sweet father to his daughters. 

The moon’s blood gave her nightmares. Far across the fire, she would thrash, scream, whimper Jarry, Tommy, no, and his chest would tighten, and his nails would bleed from clutching the frozen ground, but he would not move. She would not appreciate his comfort, not then. But her pain made him remember his wrath, and paid Lannister debts, and white and gold hands bleeding with blood that was not his own, but was—twin blood, Lannister blood, their blood, and soft flesh pressing, green eyes bulging, his eyes, their eyes, him, her, her, them, all of them, as dead as the cubs and lions who’d been killed before them.

Tonight, she was in agony. Her cries had never been so anguished, her misery never so swelled and piercing, and Jaime knew why. Lem Lemoncloak’s head had been stomped into a pulp by his foot, stomped and smashed as he thought of his lady wife, gutted by this scum, dying alone and afraid, murdered, and Jaime had killed them all, slashed and disemboweled and beheaded, but with Lem he beat and beat and beat, and the squelching was a song that could not quell the red before his eyes, the ringing in his ears, and he had never been dead enough, never, but when his broken arms stopped twitching and there was no face to stomp, only crushed brain, he had taken Myrcella, grabbed her, forced her to watch, to look at what she’d wrought, because she’d lured them here, had lied about no enemies near, had wanted to die, had wanted to kill him, and now he had Brienne’s sword but no Brienne, had heard her murderers laugh as they recalled her death, and Myrcella had struggled, did not want to see, but a madness had taken him, and he’d grabbed her chin and forced—

And it was only when she cried out that he awoke. Let her go. Walked over to the corpse, the ruin of brains and skull where Lemoncloak’s head had been, and realized what he’d done to her. Realized what he made her see. Realized that he had been and always would be a monster, and Brienne of Tarth was a fool to think he was any different from the man she’d heard spewing filth in Catelyn Stark’s dungeon. Realized that she was better off when Robert Baratheon was her father.

He hadn’t apologized; that would do nothing but make her think of it more. So he’d just covered the destroyed head that looked so much like Tommen’s, and the red strings that mirrored the tiny ribbons holding both halves of little Jaros’s body together. Walked away. Listened to his daughter’s shaking whimpers, her choked sobs. Did not hold her. Held his lady wife’s sword with someone else’s hand, looked at its red and black gleam without seeing. Uttered some sort of command to loot the place. 

And she punished him. “The sea is completely frozen, and overrun with dead things in the water, besides,” she told him, and the hatred and spite laced in her voice stabbed into him with each word. “You will never be able to take the sword to Tarth. Never.”

Never. Just like he never set the cloak about Brienne’s shoulders, only over her sweaty, bloodied pillow. Never heard her repeat the words back to him after he murmured them sweetly to her, or say them again when she was awake to hear him, listen to him say it as she watched with her open, clear eyes. Just like he never kissed her as a husband should kiss a wife—only on her forehead, when she lay dying in the Quiet Isle on the sickbed turned into a marriage bed, or quick, polite brushes on her massive, beautiful warrior’s hands that dwarfed his, or her scarred cheek as she left him that final time, to resume her quest to find Lady Sansa. Never told her that he’d married her, because she had called for him in her fevered slumber, and he would not leave then, but those fucking monks and their godsforsaken rules.

Never told her why he married her. 

Never told her. 

Never even said it to himself, in his own thoughts. Three words, unsaid, unthought, but felt so fiercely in his chest it was a wonder his heart had not yet gorged and burst, swelled in his eyes the moment he’d heard word that Brienne of Tarth was slain, yet no tears had ever fallen, none. 

There were no tears on Myrcella’s face when she rose from her bedroll, and crawled into his. She said nothing as she snuggled in and lay her head on his chest, just as she always did. Normally he’d return the kindness, hold her back, wait for her to fall into a peaceful sleep. It was not uncommon to him—this part of it. Tyrion had come to his bed many a time when they were children, seeking comfort after terrible dreams, and Jaime had apparently been quite good at keeping them at bay simply by being there, with his arms around him. It was not different with Myrcella. In this one aspect, it was not different. But his brother was dead now, too, his head separated from his body by the Others, stuffed on a frosted pike for all to see. Jaime had held the head to his chest, warmed his little brother as best he could, held him like he did when they were boys, but Tyrion did not wake up, and Jaime stood there, and Myrcella had been there, too, and she had held him and Tyrion both, and they would have died then, all three of them dead and standing in the winter, if Jon Snow had not found them. 

They were out in the winter again, now, but Tyrion’s bones were in Jaime’s bag, and it was Jaime holding Myrcella, this time, as it always should have been. He should not have shown her that weakness. 

This weakness he could share, though. “I wed her,” he told his daughter, and for the first time in eons, Jaime Lannister spoke of Brienne of Tarth.

When he woke to cold steel at his throat, he was not surprised. Not while looking into those eyes—green eyes, his eyes, and they were just as dead as his.

“What is the debt you repay?” he asked, because there were hordes of them, and all of them, forever owed. Myrcella, his twin had begged. She had looked to him to save her, but she was not his queen, not anymore. Myrcella was, and she had given Jaime no order, no ceasefire, did not stop him, because she wanted it, too, and so he heeded his queen’s commands. Grabbed the white throat. Pressed and dug and bloomed purple, because the debt—Myrcella’s husband Trystane, brave and loyal and loving to Myrcella even after learning the truth, little Tommen, his tenderhearted Cub, and Jaros, the soft babe with Jaime’s eyes and half of Jaime’s name, and Brienne, his wife, his lady wife, his blue knight, his, his. Cersei had taken them, taken all of them, ordered the Mountain to kill their grandson, and Tommen had just been a good uncle protecting his little nephew, but she hadn’t told Gregor not to hurt him, and their sweet boys had been broken, Jaime and Myrcella’s, both of them, Tommen’s head smashed like Aegon’s, Jaros ripped in half, so Jaime had grabbed his other half and squeezed, and Myrcella had wanted it then, wanted it now, but she hated him for it, and she was right. He’d forced her to look at a ruined corpse just like what their boys had left behind, and she hated him for it, and she was right.

She hated him, and she was right.

The question was a wound in her. “You know what it is,” she sneered through grit teeth and wet eyes. The dagger shook in her trembling hands, and her beautiful scarred face twisted in rage and agony, and gods, his sweet girl did not deserve him, deserve this, deserve any of it. He should have never put his seed in Cersei when she asked, never gone inside her in the first place. Their children never existing would be better. A gift he should have given them. A gift he should have given himself, the moment he opened Aerys’s throat. Forgive me, he wanted to beg her, but the words died on his tongue. 

“So do it,” he said instead, and he meant it. 

The shaking blade brushed at his flesh. Jaime did not move. He would not hurt her, could not. He could not deny her, and this was fitting, besides. A son killing a father, a brother killing a sister, a daughter-niece killing a father-uncle—all for debts, always for debts, collecting debts and pain and rage… it was the Lannister way. It was good. It was right. He would not deny her. He would let her. 

Hitched breaths, shaking, and the dagger was sheathed. Her hands found his throat, though. Two white hands, white as winter, white as her mother. Gentle, at first, then, clenching. Squeezing. Pressed, dug, cut—

Cut.

His hands were not her hands. Her nails were longer. So she’d cut him with her nails. Red wept down his flesh, a lone tear streaming.

Myrcella flinched from him as if he were fire. Her chest heaved, and her green eyes widened, and she blinked, and he looked at her, and she looked at him, and she hated. She stood, went back to her bedroll, her hands shaking so hard he could see them trembling, even in the frost and darkness and flickering firelight.

As she lay in her bedroll, eyes open and staring dead at the eternal darkness, Jaime recalled a time she lay in a real bed, in his mother’s old chambers at the Rock. Her golden curls had been sticky with sweat, and she was exhausted and pale, but there was a Cub in her arms with brown skin and black hair and green eyes, and she was beautiful, and the babe was, too. Jaime had held them close, pressed his lips against Myrcella’s temple. She leaned against him, closed her eyes. “I love you,” she had said, before slumber took her. She had not spoken a name, but somehow, Jaime knew it was for both of them, son and grandfather. He didn’t say it back, though. Just held her tighter, let the words play to her in his mind. With Brienne he could not dare say it aloud, or even think it, but considering what he’d robbed of Myrcella the moment he’d made her, she deserved that much. 

The silence was endless. Only the crackling of fire, and the breath she didn’t choke out of him. 

Then, “You should have let them kill us,” she said. 

Jaime did not know who she spoke of—the Brotherhood, or the wights, or Aegon’s soldiers, or Cersei’s wildfire. It did not matter. It was all true. 

“I know,” he said. And I love you, too.

No Excuses Writing Meme

[dreadwulf]

not-a-WIP Wednesday

I was going to put this up on Work In Progress Wednesday but it’s not exactly a WIP so here it is today. This is essentially a one-shot scene from a modern AU Braime series that does not exist. 

I’m going to do something a little weird and post an excerpt from a modern AU series that I am not going to write. I was never going to do anything with this one, for several reasons - it’s modern AU which I don’t typically write, it’s first-person (AHH I KNOW, WHY???), it’s a pretty different take on Brienne that I don’t think people would like, I can’t do another series right now... it’s something I’ve been doing just for myself, and I’ve been having fun thinking it out. 

But I did get this scene written down and I like it, so here is a Tumblr-only bonus. 

You can probably put the scenario together from context, so I won’t say too much in set-up. The story would have been called Dogface, and this is well into it. J/B met under traumatic circumstances and have kept in touch afterwards via phone/internet, but rarely see each other in person. They definitely caught feelings but have kept it to themselves for reasons that will be clear.

So here it is.

***************************************************

I hug my raincoat around me. I’m getting his fancy chair wet, but I can’t bring myself to take it off. I’m unsettled enough right now without awkwardly wrestling with wet clothes. There’s no point trying to make myself comfortable anyway.

My hair drips rainwater down my face, and I stare at the carpet and try to stop shivering. The carpet is so thick I want to lie down and put my face in it. It reminds me of a 70’s shag carpet, except one that won the lottery and put on a silk robe. And white. Why is the room white? It doesn’t look like Jaime at all. I bet he never uses this room.

Only Lannisters can pay for rooms in New York City that they don’t use. 

In the next room (only Lannisters can pay for apartments in New York City that have so many rooms) Jaime says something about nobody’s sat in this stupid chair in all the time he’s lived here anyway and not to worry about messing it up. So I don’t, much. He shows up with a blanket that doesn’t go with this room at all, something quilted and old and fairly normal-looking, and wraps it around my shoulders.

I speak up suddenly. “They want to give me another surgery.”

He stops with his hands still on my arms. “On your face?”

I pull the blanket around me. “I saw this doctor - my father insisted - and he thinks he can fix my scars.”

“That’s good news! Isn’t it?” He comes around to sit on the uncomfortable-looking couch across from me. “Why don’t you think that’s good news?”

“They all say that.” I can feel his eyes on me and I shift uncomfortably under his scrutiny. “They all think they can fix me, surgeons. They have some new thing, cutting edge, state of the art, and they’re not like those other doctors. This one’s going to fix my face, he’s special, he’s the one.”

He just stares at me for a second, working on a question, and it’s clear this has never occurred to him to wonder about. “How many surgeries have you had?”

Straight to the point, Lannister. No tact whatsoever. Drives me crazy, but today I like that. It saves time.

“Eleven.”

I hear his sudden intake of breath - he wasn’t expecting that. I smile bitterly. This is all new to him - my parade of doctors and hospitals - and I forget that it’s a big number, eleven. I guess the usual answer is zero.

“Most of them were right after the attack, when I was nine and ten. At first it really did improve things. I was pretty hideous just afterwards, for a while there was just a big hole in my face, basically, and they did fix that. But some of them only made things worse. They’d put new skin in and it wouldn’t take, my jawbone got infected, the muscles didn’t work. Then it was one every couple of years, when the new guy said he could undo the damage the last guy did, and sometimes he did but it would cause some other problem. It worked better but looked worse, and I lost some nerve function. I can’t even feel my face on this part.” 

I put up my hand and stroke the creepy blank part that’s all scar tissue and no nerves, where it feels like nothing at all, just in front of my ear. I had this weird impulse for awhile to just scratch there and keep scratching until I felt something. Just dig a big hole in my face again. But I’d have to have another surgery after that, and by then I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I shudder, thinking of hospitals and bandages and taking food through a straw and pain, lots of pain. 

“I swore it all off when I turned 18. I said what’s done is done, and this is my face now. There was nothing more they could do anymore, anyway. Just little things. The damage is too great.”

“But this one thinks he can do something?”

“Yeah.”

God, I wish I still had a drink. I look longingly at the liquor cabinet that was probably stocked with all kinds of wonderful things months ago, but it would be empty now. I should have had another gin and tonic before I left the bar.

Lannister follows my eyes, and sighs. He stands up like a tent collapsing and walks over to the fancy rosewood box I was looking at so longingly. 

When he opens the little door it’s my turn for my eyes to bug out. It’s full. He has all kinds of bottles in that cabinet. Big, expensive-looking bottles, and at least one decanter full of amber liquid. 

“I thought you quit?” I ask it before I can really think about what I’m saying, and when I do I cringe. 

“I did.” He carefully selects a bottle. “This is all old stuff. I should probably have thrown it out, but if I didn’t have a drink on hand for Cersei or Tyrion or my father when they came to call it would have been something to explain, and I don’t need the trouble.” 

I start to think about that - he shouldn’t be anywhere near alcohol, it’s too much of a temptation. And he keeps it around anyway because he doesn’t want to explain to his family that he’s an alcoholic. 

He pours one full glass. Not a small glass either.

“I shouldn’t. Not in front of you.” 

“Just this once. It’s a special occasion. Don’t turn down your host, it would be rude.” Jaime brings me the glass, a crystal twisting thing that looks like a movie prop. He hands it over carefully, so it won’t spill.

Has he really quit? If he’s keeping this around, I doubt it. But he looks a lot healthier than he did before, and he hasn’t sounded drunk over the phone lately, not like that first night at least. I think I’d be able to tell. I think. 

I’d like to be able to tell him that they would understand, they would support him like a family should and congratulate him on being sober, not drink in front of him and not encourage him to get plastered like usual but the thing is, they probably wouldn’t. He doesn’t have that kind of family. He has the kind that would scoff and say he was being a big baby and then give him a bottle of expensive liquor for his birthday to prove some bizarre point. Something just like this bottle.

I don’t tell him anything. I take the glass from him instead. The first swallow burns all the way down and I tell myself I will persuade him to get rid of the liquor before I go.

He grins at me and settles back in his chair. “Enjoy it. That’s about a hundred dollars you just drank.”

“Good lord.” I take a few swallows quickly. If I’m going to drink in front of him I can at least make it quick. The glass comes back to rest in my hands and I feel the round, full taste of the alcohol in my throat. “It’s delicious.”

“I know.” His smile turns sorrowful. “Used to be my favorite.”

The liquor sends a warming cloud all through me, out to my fingertips. It numbs that painful throb of dread that I’ve been feeling ever since I came out of the doctor’s office today, the old part of me that was always so stupidly hopeful that one day everything would be different. The part I thought I had killed. 

A little bit of my self-consciousness recedes. The part of me that knows exactly what I look like and exactly how I don’t fit, how ridiculous I am, what a fool I’m making of myself. It gets a little quieter and I can breathe again. I can exist without hating that I exist. I lean back a little in the chair and I start to feel warm again.

It’s nice.

It’s nice, sitting here.

His green eyes catch the light briefly, and for a second he is so devastatingly, painfully handsome it’s like a blow to the chest. His hair curls down over his face in a ludicrously appealing way, glossy and golden, and it could be one of his magazine photos right here in front of me. But I’m the only one here to appreciate it. Kind of a waste, really.

“He really is world-famous, I guess.” I turn the glass in my hands and let the words roll out of my mouth without looking at them too closely. “The surgeon I saw today. He’s fixed cases worse than mine, from what I’ve read. He made it sound so easy. Maybe he really could do something for me.”

He lays his arm up over the top of the couch casually. Never in my life have I been as at-ease as Jaime is all of the time. I would wonder if he was even listening to me, except I know he is, he always is. He pays a lot more attention to things than he lets on. 

“So when’s the surgery?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” I drink the rest of the glass, too fast, let the alcohol burn down me like a kind of punishment. Then I set the glass on his perfect coffee table. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go back to hospitals and doctors and people squinting at my face like it’s a clogged sink they have to unplug. It’s awful. It’s horrible and I hate every minute of it and I told myself I would never do it again.”

He shrugs at me. “Then don’t do it.”

That pisses me off. How he makes everything sound so easy. The next thing I know I’m practically lecturing him. 

“How can I not do it? What if he really could fix me? I could have a normal face. I could cut my hair. I could get my picture taken like a normal person. I could look in the mirror without wincing. I could talk to people without their eyes going to my left cheek.” I’m getting loud. I guess I’m a loud drunk. I’m usually not around anyone when I’m drinking so I didn’t know it. “If I didn’t have this face, I could go farther in my career. Do interviews, meet people instead of freelancing and working at home. I could go on dates. I could have friends.”

“You could have all of that now.” He leans forward, now strangely intense. “You don’t have to stay shut up in your cave all of the time. You can go out, you can meet people.”

“People who will stare at me and laugh at me and pity me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You couldn’t possibly understand. With your face? You get free drinks everywhere you go with that face. You’re the most ridiculously photogenic person on earth. I bet even your driver’s license photo is beautiful. You could not possibly imagine my life.” That liquor is hitting me really hard now. Did he finish bottles of this all on his own? How?

Now he’s the one getting irritated. He starts raking a hand through his hair like he does whenever he’s too agitated to sit still. “Do it, don’t do it, it’s up to you. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Maybe just listen for once. I don’t want your advice. I wasn’t even going to tell anyone about this.” I put my head in my hands. My hair’s still wet. My hands come away damp. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m arguing with you. I just… I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything right now, do you?” Jaime tilts his head to one side, peering at me closely. “I’ve never seen you so worked up before, Brienne. And I’ve seen you with a gun to your head.”

I laugh a little. “I was too mad to be scared then.”

“What are you scared of now?”

I sniffle. Scared is not what I thought I was. But he’s probably right. “I don’t know. I think I… What if I did it and it doesn’t work? I get all my hopes up again and go through all the pain and the medicine and the time off work and the cost, god, I don’t even know how I would pay for it… and if I somehow got through all of that, and it didn’t work? Or it made my face worse? I don’t know what I’d do.”

That surprises me; I wasn’t planning to say any of that. I think a little more, because I think that’s not all, I think there’s something I’m even more afraid of.

“What if it does work and it doesn’t make anything better?”

I sit back again and let that sentence hang in the air all by itself. It plays in my head a few more times and I know now that I’ve said it, I won’t be able to stop thinking it. I’ll be staring at the ceiling thinking that now. Dammit.

Jaime looks confused though. “What do you mean?”

“I just... I’ve spent so many years thinking that if my face was better I would have this whole other life, that people would like me, my career would take off, I’d have a family of my own… just all of these things. What if I fixed my face and it still doesn’t happen? I’d still be… this.”

I hold out my arms, a little woozily, and I look at them. I look at my legs and how my knees jut up from the chair because it’s too low -- no, because I’m too big for it. I’m too big. I’m ridiculous. 

“I mean, look at me. Even without my face, people would still stare. I’m six foot five inches, you know. I wear a size eleven shoe. I have to special order my clothes. My shoulders are too broad, my jaw’s too big, I don’t have any curves like a woman should. I’m hardly a woman at all.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“But you did. Remember?”  

He makes a sour face and clenches his jaw. “Yeah. I was being an asshole.”

“You’re far from the only one to say something about it. Even from the back I get comments, whispers, before they see my face. If I wear a dress they laugh at me, because I look like a man in a dress - I do, I know it.” I cut off whatever he is going to say. “I get called ‘Sir’ everywhere I go, even in a skirt, and then they see I’m a woman and either it’s funny or disgusting or I don’t know what. And it’s just as bad if I wear men’s clothes. I get that same moment of realization where people wonder what exactly I am. What am I trying to do, disguise myself? Am I transitioning one way or another? Do I have gender identity issues? Am I ashamed of being a woman? Suddenly they’ve imagined some whole identity for me that I didn’t choose. I’m not trying to be gender non-conforming, I just have this body and I have to live in it. Maybe I don’t want to wear men’s clothes! Maybe I’d like to wear something delicate and pretty and they just don’t make that for a woman like me, and if I wore it people would laugh!

“People get angry. At me. Because of what I am. I’m an ugly, manish woman and people hate that. They hate it when I try to do feminine things and they hate it when I try to do masculine things and they’d rather I just go away. People don’t want me to exist. That’s why I hide away in my cave. It’s better that way. I’m happier and they’re happier.”

“So what if they fix my face. They can’t fix the rest of me. I’m never going to be right. And the worst thing is… I wouldn’t know what to do if they could. I don’t know how to be anything else. I don’t know how to talk to people and have normal relationships. I’m almost 30 years old and I’ve never had a serious relationship, I don’t have friends, I’ve never been out of this city and I probably never will. Taking the scars off my face will only prove it’s me, I’m the problem, and it’s not my face or my body or other people being assholes. It’s me.”

I have to stop talking now, because my throat is too tight. There’s a sob in there trying to get out and I refuse, I refuse to cry in front of him. So my throat is closing up and I can hardly breathe through it and I have to close my eyes tight and bend over and put my hands on either side of my face and hold myself very still. 

“Brienne.”

He’s very close now, he’s come up in front of me kneeling next to my stupid knobby knees and it makes it worse. I’m shaking from the effort of it, holding the tears in. My eyes are starting to leak and there’s nothing I can do about that but I can stop myself from bawling like a baby, damn it, I refuse.

“I like who you are. Brienne?” He puts a hand on my knee. “Who you are is wonderful. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

No. That couldn’t possibly be true.

It gets out. A sob tears out of me. It’s violently, embarrassingly loud and a gush of tears follow it. 

I fold myself over in half and put my arms over my face and around my knees so that I’m completely hidden, and I just cry and cry. 

It’s horrible. Fuck, I hate crying. 

Then the strangest thing happens. Jaime somehow… unfolds me until I fall forward against him. My face is pressed into his shoulder. He has both arms around me and he’s just kneeling there on the floor and somehow I don’t knock him over and he doesn’t struggle with me even though he’s smaller than me. He’s solid. He’s got me. And he just holds me and I cry and my whole body shakes with it.

Eventually it stops. I don’t run out of tears - they’re still in there, I can feel them, but I’m too worn out to cry anymore. I’m raw and exhausted and he’s still holding me against his shoulder. We stay that way for a long while.

He smells so good.

[aviss]

I didn't know you were taking the Arcana prompts, too! Oops/ Would you consider the Moon, please?

Thanks so much for the prompt! Hope you don’t mind some fix-it of the very bad scene in 8.04

The Moon: domesticity, the wilderness, howling, illusion, insecurity

Brienne woke up slowly, by stages, not the abrupt snap into consciousness of a seasoned soldier in the middle of a war, but the luxurious stretch of limbs she had become accustomed to in the past moon, the burrowing into the warm blankets and the warmer body pressed against hers. Except, when she went to hold Jaime’s body against her, she only touched air. 

The sheets were still warm and the fire was burning merrily in the hearth, she yawned and lifted her head. Jaime was standing by the heard, his back to her, head hanging. 

He was fully dressed.

“Jaime,” Brienne rasped, suddenly gripped by a terrible fear. “Come back to bed.”

He didn’t move, though his back hunched further, shoulders coming up, tense. “I’m sorry,” he said, barely a whisper. Brienne wouldn’t have heard it if there had been any other noise in the castle, if it hadn’t been the darkest hour where everyone slept. 

She had seen him like this, staring into the fire lost inside his own mind several times in the past moon since they started sharing her chambers. It usually happened when he’d had troubled sleep, or if he’d been with his brother. Brienne wasn’t an idiot, she knew he was thinking about his sister, back in King’s Landing, and that part of him probably wanted to be with her.

It was the part of him that usually took over during the night, when fears and demons spoke the loudest. 

She hadn’t seen the shadow of Cersei during their waking hours, hadn’t had to contend with her during their lovemaking, when Jaime only had eyes for her and gave his entire being to her. She wasn’t there during their meals or their training. She wasn’t there when Jaime sparred with Pod, nor when they were discussing the reconstruction of Winterfell and assigning jobs to the people. And she wasn’t inside their chambers when they lay entwined with each other talking about their past, and the years separation, their bodies still cooling after their previous exertions. 

At night, when they slept, was a different matter. Brienne had heard him muttering her name, and had seen him get up and go stare into the fire until he was shivering, arms crossed over his own torso. He always came back to bed and warmed against her body, pressing fevered kisses to her naked skin and calling her name like a benediction. 

Brienne had feared one day he wouldn’t come back to bed. 

“Jaime,” she repeated. “Please.”

He flinched as if hit, but didn’t turn back. “Go back to sleep, Brienne.”

She got out of the bed instead and walked to him, the coldness of the stone on her bare feel making her shiver. She had known, somehow, today would be the day Cersei’s shadow would take him from her, had known it since Sansa had received the raven.

“Go back to bed, Brienne, you’ll freeze,” he said, still not looking at her, his voice flat and lifeless.

“You’re leaving me,” she said, the words hanging in the air between them. 

“I’m sorry.”

“They’re going to destroy that city, this time there is no sacrifice for you to make that will stop them.”

“I know that,” some bite had returned to his voice, a spark of life.

She blinked rapidly against the sting in her eyes, she knew what he meant to do if not saving the city. “You can stay here, with me, and live.”

“I don’t deserve that, I don’t deserve you. She wouldn’t have done half of the things she’s done without me. She’s going to die for all her crimes, but she couldn’t have done it without me.”

Brienne’s heart clenched, half in sorrow and half in rage. “Fine,” she said, the word dragged out of her. She turned and went to her clothes, and started putting her underwear on, then her undershirt and breeches. Jaime turned at the noise, an alarmed look on his face when she saw her getting dressed.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m coming with you.”

She was almost gratified at the panic on his face before he smoothed it out, his jaw set. “Absolutely not. You just said it, they’re going to destroy the city.”

“I know that,” she mimicked him. 

Jaime narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re not coming, you’ll die.”

She mirrored his expression. “And how do you propose to stop me?” She looked at Widow’s wail strapped to his waist and lifted her eyebrows in challenge. 

Jaime flinched as if struck, deflating. “Please. You don’t deserve to die there, you belong here where people respect you. You’re a Knight, you’re Sansa’s trusted commander.”

She approached him, fully dressed and grabbed Oathkeeper from the peg where it hung, strapping it to her own waist. “You said you deserved to die because your sister wouldn’t have held onto power without you,” she said, playing her last card. “You wouldn’t have been in a position to help her were it not for me. I got you back to her.”

Jaime shook his head. “No.”

“If her crimes are yours, then your crimes are mine. We can all die together in King’s Landing.” She headed to the door. “Come, we have to ride hard to get there in time to die with Cersei.”

He grabbed her shoulder and made her turn. “What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” She saw the anguish and desperation on his face. “You have to stay here. I can ride south and face my sins if I know you are here.”

“They are my sins too,” she said, softly.

“No they’re not, you stupid, stubborn wench!” he spat, pushing her against the door and closing the space between their bodies, caging her there. “I have to go to her, we were born together and we’re meant to die the same way. But you have to live. I can’t bear the idea of you dying with me, don’t you see?”

“And what makes you think I can bear it if it’s you?” She put her hands on her face. “You do love me, that is the reason you want me to live. I love you, and I’ll try to keep you here even if you hate me for it.”

“I could never hate you,” Jaime whispered, horrified by the prospect. 

“If your sister loved you, she’d want you to stay here, as far from King’s Landing as possible. If she wants you there so you can die with her, she doesn’t love you.”

She saw the moment she got through to him, the fight gone out of him. He sagged against her, his head dropping to her shoulder. Brienne encircled his back with her arms while he shook against her, not caring that her jerkin was getting wet or that her back was getting stiff. They stayed like that for an eternity, until Brienne moved them back inside the room and started the process of undressing them both. 

Jaime let her, and let her put him to bed again, curling immediately against her body. 

There would be no more sleep for either of them, but it was fine, they were together and alive. They would stay that way, the shadow of Cersei finally gone.

[slaygentford]

Please talk about Brienne and Cersei and Cersei getting the redemption arc from meeting Brienne. Please. I am DESPERATE!

this is SO nebulous bc cersei is truly so fucking evil it’d take so much work and some fundamental rewrites. I think it’d be easier to swing with the show verse than books, bc my interpretation has always been that show cersei is fun evil, whereas book cersei is genuinely ill. but still there’s so many POSSIBILITIES. like, what if: somehow cersei is the one brienne strings along as prisoner. she’s revolted but also, primarily, JEALOUS. jealous in a way jaime would never be jealous of brienne. jealous bc brienne did the one thing cersei knows to be impossible: to be born a woman but play a man’s role. how long would she sneer and mock until she couldn’t help herself anymore and demanded to be taught how to fight. until she had to poke and prod and learn how brienne became what she is. cersei watching brienne take out 7 men like 

pictured: lannister twins be the same 

the main thing with jaime and brienne’s connection is that they recognize themselves in each other, and that doesn’t work w cersei, so I think this – seeing what they both wanted to be (a knight for cersei, a beautiful lady for brienne) – could take the place of that soulmates mutual recognition moment, fill up that narrative space.

(obv the valonqar prophecy has completely shaped book cersei’s character so either it doesn’t exist or jaime is more evil or smth idk there’d be some rewriting involved in that whatever DONT think abt it. also if jaime is the valonqar and not like, arya in his face, then brienne is a major part of jaime becoming the valonqar so this wouldn’t even be applicable in this au… whatever forget the prophecy )

what kills me is that even the women around cersei are like, deeply conniving. yes this is re taena. and when faced with a genuinely nice woman, cersei usually finds a way to believe that they’re conniving, because she’s paranoid and incapable of believing anyone is nice for the sake of it. and like. prolonged exposure to brienne esp if they were imprisoned together… eventually she’d just have to accept it, the way jaime did. she’d have to just accept that this is a genuinely good, kind person. and like jaime I think it’d absolutely cause her brain to blue screen, do a hard restart. HERE IS A WOMAN WHO REPAINTS YOUR WORLD. brienne’s POWER and strength. ugh 

idk what cersei could confess in the bath. perhaps not an evil she’s done but an evil done to her, bc ultimately that was jaime’s confession, the evils he witnessed. porhap she could confess how she loved rhaegar, her horror at being her father’s pawn. perhap some new invented plot point that George did not think of. perhap perhap

also George doesn’t know this and don’t tell him but cersei was born to be butch. I was obsessed with this in the show btw, and part of why I say this could work better w show verse: how cersei didn’t let her hair grow out after it was cut, how she stopped wearing gowns, started with these like, long tunics and masculine coats. like this idea that somehow that ordeal freed her, that she finally became herself, that the outside could for once match the inside… fuck jaime, cersei’s head being shorn on the kingsroad and her suddenly seeing a mirror in brienne…. oh man. I s2g if you just gave cersei a fucking pair of pants her life would change in an instant 

I do think that like, cersei, esp book cersei, could never make a full redemption arc, because she genuinely enjoys being bad so much, in a way jaime doesn’t. jaime’s evil is about 50% bluff (trebuchet) and 50% legit (bran), and even when he is being genuinely evil, he half-asses it and like, has dissociative spirals. you could at least show a little enthusiasm about murdering children, my man. but all cerseis are legit quite horrible.

this is already too long but also from brienne’s side of it, the idea that she was always fated to get tangled up w this fucking family one way or another