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Brienne adjusts, given time.
She’s been a crownsguard before: serving the queen in the north is not so different from serving the once-king of the seven kingdoms. The Red Queen, as they call her, keeps her guard dressed in furs rather than the draperies of the rainbow, true, but they stand guard as loyally and as firmly as they ever did for Renly.
There are fewer tourneys, though. That suits Brienne fine. She’s not old yet – gods, sometimes she still feels that she’s barely an adult, that she’s little more than a child tripping around in shoes a half-size too big and taking on burdens she cannot possibly hope to overcome – but she feels a weariness deep in her bones that worsens when the winds howl through Winterfell.
In those moments, sometimes, she locks herself in her room. Only when her duties are done, of course. Only when the queen has other guards at her side.
Then, she can draw the sword out of its wrappings, out of the wooden box at the foot of her bed. She feels foolish sometimes, to hide it. There’s no shame in a sword. A sword is a weapon, wielded to protect, and perhaps this Valyrian steel blade would serve her queen better than the castle-forged steel Brienne carries at her hip.
Serving her queen, she has realized, is not always the same as taking care of her queen, though. She wishes Sansa Stark no harm. The girl – woman, now, although still somehow a frightened girl when Brienne glances her out of the corner of her eye – has done her nothing but kindness, and Brienne promised her mother and Jaime Lannister both that she would keep her safe.
Safe, it seems, is not only a matter of the physical.
Maybe she has grown up after all – she wonders, sometimes, what he would think, and that thought is what reassures her that she’s still just an overgrown child, chasing after a dead man’s approval. Jaime Lannister’s opinions are meaningless. Kingslayer, kinslayer, dead man, years gone.
Still, though. Sometimes she takes the sword out and runs her fingertips along the lion’s head, and wonders. The sword is retired, tucked quietly away, forced to spill no blood. Forced to fight no battles. Forced to take no heads.
It’s… something, she always decides, uncomfortable with searching too deeply for the words. And something will have to be enough.