She’s hateful, and so am I.
The words had cut her deeper than if Oath Keeper had been thrust straight through her heart by his own hand. They were painful words, antagonizing words. Ones she couldn’t un-hear, no matter how hard she tried.
And tried, she had.
From the predawn decision to mount her steed and bolt south through the death-battered gates of Winterfell to the moment she’d spotted that surly bastard Clegane lumbering within the Red Keep’s atrium, her laser focus had been reduced to nothing more than sputtering flashes. She could lie to Podrick all she wanted about seeking out her other charge, but she could not lie to herself about why she’d trekked—amidst the brutal carnage—to King’s Landing.
***
He had just beseeched her to leave this place. Well, inasmuch as a snarly beast would ask. He bellowed for her to go, but what she’d recognized instead in his gnarled face and heard in his roared words were the remnants of the compassion that life had tried—almost successfully—to wring from him.
She’d left him to die once.
And now, as they both contemplated how best to achieve the one thing they’d stayed alive long enough to accomplish, he’d insisted that he did not want that same fate for her.
Grudgingly heeding his urgings, she walked away from him for what she was certain would be the final time. Looking over her shoulder as he climbed the collapsing stair, she contemplated the man and not The Hound.
Sandor Clegane.
The sentiment was instantly lost as the vaulted hall began crumbling all around her. Narrowly avoiding the falling ashlar and masonry that now blocked her path, she was forced to dash toward the dark crevasses of The Keep’s hidden tunnel networks. She normally wouldn’t have contemplated an ensnaring descent into the hellish pitch of the Chamber of the Dragon Mosaic while hellfire also rained from above, but she’d grown to learn her way around this God-forsaken castle since first arriving in the south as a child all those years ago. Which is why, even as she maneuvered in complete darkness, she knew how many steps would take her to the torch-lined wall before she made her way to the shaft that would ultimately lead to the secluded beach just north of the Blackwater Rush.
She had begun to reach for one of the unlit torches just as she recognized delicate footfalls several paces behind her.
Blessed Many-Faced God!
Clegane would not be the only one to be rewarded with vengeance this day.
***
When your tears have drowned you, the Valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale, white throat and choke the life from you.
She couldn’t shake the prophetic words from her mind, namely due to the scorching treachery now manifesting at the hands of her brother and his white-haired queen.
No, she would not perish like the pathetic, cowering smallfolk outside the castle walls. Hastening her steps, she navigated along the corridor in darkness. Reaching the stairway that would lead her to the bay, she cradled her slightly distended belly with both hands before rushing downward. She had only taken a handful of steps before she heard an animalistic growl. Without the benefit of sight, she could only ascertain that the sound had been behind her. Stopping in her tracks, she listened for it again. When it didn’t come, she took another step. She was halfway down the stairs when the scuff of a flint-strike followed by an illuminating orange glow brightened the stairway. She turned just in time to see pursed lips and a short blade.
Awooooooo.
The low, mimicked howl came just as the blade was propelled in the direction of her head. Staggering backward, she avoided the intended beheading, but was severely gashed across her collar. Unable to right her footing, she tumbled violently the rest of the way down the stony decline.
“That was for Lady. And Bran,” came the cold and measured words from above.
“Who’s there?” she croaked painfully.
“No one.”
Attempting, yet unable to rise to her feet, she realized that she could not outrun her pursuer in her current mangled state. Relegated to her knees, the future of the golden-haired lion insisted that she at least try.
***
He didn’t know how much longer he had. Admittedly, impaling the impostor had been more about revenge than survival, but that one moment’s break in concentration had allowed the man to also stab him deeply beneath the breastplate. Now spilling precious life’s blood, he could not be certain that he’d ever see her again.
His purpose. His desire.
Trudging on leaded feet, he made his way from the beach, up to the hidden entry point amid the rocky cliff side. His will was strong, but his body was broken and would move no faster. Tirelessly he forged on, a pain in every step and an array of crimson pools and puddles left in his wake. When he finally reached the bowels of the lower den, the sight before him nearly stopped his heart.
“That was for Eddard Stark,” the cold words were issued just after the blade sliced across her achilles, rendering her completely immobile.
“No!” he screamed as blood spurt from both of their open wounds.
“Kingslayer,” the assailant greeted with no mirth in her voice.
“Is she—”?
“Soon enough.”
Standing to his full height and exerting enough energy to make him lightheaded, he issued a recognizable mandate of his own as he surged forward. “Not today.”
Their parrying and thrusting were equal parts skill and madness. Dust and rubble fell from above, but neither noticed. One suffered from bloodlust, the other from blood loss, but neither was willing to see reason. Metal clanged endlessly as the tunnel groaned.
“Jaime please, don’t let me die here,” came a whimper from the huddled mass behind them.
The brief distraction was all that was needed to completely disarm him. As his steel clattered to the ground, she advanced quickly, placing her blade at his throat.
“I’d given up my quarrel with you until this very moment,” she ground out, suddenly eager to run him through as the agonizing memories of loss began to wash over her.
“I wish I could say that I was sorry about your family but—”
“—The things we do for love,” she finished as she pierced him.
“Lady Arya!”
Startled, she turned to witness her needless champion storming toward her.
“What are you doing here?”
“Keeping you from doing something stupid,” she admonished as she stood between her charge and her lover.
“Move aside, Ser Knight, you are only prolonging the inevitable,” she grated out both angrily and sarcastically.
“We must leave The Keep at once, we haven’t much time,” she insisted, just as she heard her name murmured through a bloody gurgle.
“Brienne.”
Stunned silent, she turned to see his penetrating blue gaze holding fast to her own.
“Please, help us.”
As if jolted by a bolt from the New Gods, she quickly knelt at his side. Assessing the wound at his neck and the other in his chest, she carefully lifted him to where his sister now lay slumped against the far wall.
“You’d come here to save him, when he’s come here to save her,” her charge spat vehemently.
Ignoring the tantrum, she set the pair alongside one another before unstrapping her scabbard and laying it at his feet.
“You must wake,” she said calmly as she knelt again in front of the blond and bloodied twosome.
As eyes identical to her beloved’s opened, she began speaking in a deceptively comforting tone.
“She is hateful. She is tyrannical. She is unlovable, and yet you still love her. You’ve cast away so much for that love and it has cost you. She will die here this day, and so will her child. As a father, you will never get the chance to know her child and you…you will also never know mine.”
Eyes the size of saucers took in Brienne as she stood again to her full height. Though words were now a commodity that he could no longer afford, he exuded his last vestiges of energy to grasp her hand tightly. Tears pooled in his eyes as he battled with the regret and resignation at the fate he’d sealed for them both.
“Nothing else matters, only us,” she said as she cut her eyes from him and briefly cradled her still flat stomach.
Turning on her heel, she immediately met the inquisitive eyes of her leery charge.
“What did you just whisper to them?” she asked suspiciously.
“Only that they deserved each other,” she said as she gripped the smaller woman’s arm and rushed them from the swaying and trembling structure.
