GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 402 - Misery Loves Company

Brienne didn't move.

She stood like a statue forgotten in a corner, rooted in place, watching Jaime Lannister's lonely silhouette.

The fire in the hearth crackled and spat, pulling his shadow long across the cold stone wall where it wavered, unsteady.

"Why are you still here?"

Jaime didn't turn around. His voice carried impatience , and beneath it, barely perceptible, exhaustion.

"The story's done. Shouldn't you leave now, like everyone else? Take your contempt or your pity with you and go?"

"Or is the unwanted maiden knight of Tarth going to draw her sword right now — cleanse the realm for the Faith of the Seven, and take the Kingslayer's head?"

Sharp and caustic as always.

That was his armor. The armor he'd spent a lifetime building to fend off the world.

This time, it did nothing.

"I've been accused of killing Renly Baratheon."

Brienne's voice came out uncertain.

Jaime went still.

He turned slowly. His green eyes held surprise, and something searching underneath it.

He knew about this. He did.

He just didn't know the full story , only the outcome. Renly Baratheon found dead in his own tent, with only his sworn guard and Brienne of Tarth and that glittering Knight of Flowers anywhere near him.

When the news reached King's Landing, everyone had the same story: the tall, ugly woman, spurned or bribed, had betrayed the lord she'd sworn to serve.

Just like him. Another monster who had broken her oath.

That was the second label the world had pressed onto her.

The first was "the Beauty."

The Beauty , because Brienne's face was so plain that no man in his right mind would look twice at her.

How fitting.

"But I didn't do it."

Brienne looked at him. Those blue eyes, always so resolute, held something she rarely showed: helplessness.

It was a feeling she had only ever seen in one other person.

The man standing in front of her. The man she had despised for the first half of her life.

"It was a shadow."

Her voice came out dry, like someone recounting a nightmare they couldn't wake from.

"A shadow wearing Stannis's face. It carried a black dagger and came out of nowhere."

"I had sworn an oath to Renly. To protect him with my life."

"But there was nothing I could do. Everything happened too fast. I could only watch as that dagger drove into his heart."

"I watched Renly die in my arms. And then... everyone came pouring in."

"The way they looked at me — like I was a monster. A traitor."

"I couldn't explain it. No one would believe a story about a shadow. It sounds even more absurd than your story about saving five hundred thousand people."

The room went still.

Only the fire breathing.

The mockery on Jaime's face faded, piece by piece, until there was nothing left of it.

He looked at Brienne, and for a moment he was looking at himself.

The same accusation. The same impossible defense. The same crime that wasn't theirs to carry, worn like a brand through a world that had already made up its mind.

So there was someone, in this world, who actually understood what it felt like.

That particular loneliness , being misread by everyone, spat on by everyone, left alone to tend your own wounds in private.

He had always assumed he was the only one.

Now there were two.

"Sit down."

The sharpness was gone from Jaime's voice. Completely gone, for the first time.

He gestured toward the chair by the hearth, then poured another cup of wine and held it out to her.

This time, Brienne didn't refuse.

She took the cup. The cold of the pewter steadied her thoughts, just slightly.

She reached up and pulled off her heavy chainmail, letting it drop, and stood in her gray linen tunic underneath.

Without the armor, she no longer looked like a warrior. She looked like something closer to a woman. Helpless, almost.

Even accounting for her build.

She settled into the chair before the hearth. The firelight moved across her face , not a beautiful face, but in this light the severity of it had softened, and the hard line of her mouth had eased.

Jaime sat across from her. The fire leapt between them. Neither spoke.

A long silence stretched out.

"Oaths..."

Brienne stared at the wine shifting in her cup, voice quiet.

"I grew up believing oaths were sacred. Absolute. Black is black and white is white — those who keep their oaths are knights, and those who break them are traitors."

"I always believed that."

She raised her eyes to his.

"Now I know there's a gray country between the black and the white that no one can see."

"And I know now that sometimes , sometimes breaking one oath is the only way to keep another one that matters more."

Those words found the crack in something that had been sealed shut inside Jaime for a very long time.

He looked at her. His green eyes had gone still, deep and moonlit, like water with no bottom.

Then he laughed.

A real laugh. Something that came from somewhere genuine.

"You know something, Brienne."

"Sometimes I almost envy you."

She stared at him.

"At least Renly wasn't a king. The crime you carry is a small one."

He swirled his cup slowly.

"Whereas I am a Kingslayer. A successful one."

Brienne held his gaze. When she spoke, she chose each word carefully.

"No. You're not a Kingslayer. You're a hero who saved five hundred thousand lives , and spent a lifetime being cursed by every one of them for it."

The smile froze on Jaime's face.

Hero.

He hadn't heard that word in so long he had nearly stopped knowing it applied to him at all.

Before he became the Kingslayer, he had been the most celebrated knight in Westeros. The dream of a thousand girls who had never met him.

He looked at Brienne's earnest face. He opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

He reached for his wine.

➤ Next: A Letter from Tywin