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All curses start out as blessings. For Brienne, she was unsure if it was meant to be a blessing at all. She remembered how she was, how she is: a tangle of limbs, blue eyes, too tall to be a lady, too broad to be a girl, mouth too wide, lips too big, and the attitude of an immovable cow. She was the bane of Septa Roelle’s second career. Her first career, Brienne discovered, was that of a rotten fairy.
She remembered the words clearly, as she remembered all words spoken to her now. Roelle being fed up for the last time with her talking back. ”You are to be a lady, Brienne. An ugly one, so it would be best for you to keep in line as well.” And then, “Speak only when spoken to, and reflect the words that are being given.”
And that was that. Brienne’s voice became an echo.
She ran away. As if being muted would have robbed her of her want for freedom and choice. People did not take well to being repeated, feeling mocked, so Brienne retired into a familiar forest of her childhood. This meadow had birds that chirped easily at her, fish in the stream, plenty of green, a lake that the sun shined on, and a small cottage to call her own. No one here cared that she was ugly and rebellious and wild. No one else was here. She was lonely but content; here she could swing her sword without refrain, wear breeches without reprimand, and grow without trepidation.
And then, years after her “blessing”, the most beautiful man that Brienne had ever seen traipsed into her wood, hacking away at one of her trees. Outraged and without words, Brienne charged in to defend her home, sword brandished.
The beautiful man yelped back in surprise, "They told me a beast of a woman was the guardian of this lake. Are you really a woman? You're much uglier than any woman I've ever seen.”
She didn't spare him a response, only swung her sword to get him away, but he met her strike with his own. Again, and again, and again. He was an intruder, but Brienne couldn’t fight the grin that came over her face as he parried her strike again. Her blood hummed like a song. She wondered if it echoed his own.
He was better at the sword than her. He no doubt had training with masters, sparred with others, learned techniques. She had her strength though, and for a while they seemed evenly matched. Then he stepped slyly and turned his wrist a certain way and all at once her sword was flying out of her hand and she was disarmed and cornered to the point of his blade.
“Yield,” he said, breathing hard.
He didn’t look vicious here. He looked like a knight from a song, shining with sweat in the sun. In stillness, she could see his beauty accented by light scars and a face worn of battling. There was no malice in his green eyes, just a lightness that had only gotten brighter in the glint of their blades.
“Yield,” he commanded.
“Yield,” she repeated, defiantly.
“You’re a strange one, acting like you’re not the one with a blade to your neck.” The beautiful man laughed and tipped the point of the sword under her chin, “Why would I yield?”
“I yield.”
The man lowered his blade and smiled at her, golden hair falling across his eyes like a swath of sunshine. He grinned at her, harmlessly, charmfully. “You fought well, much better than the trees around here, I had expected to vent my anger futilely amongst the wood but you provided a much better bloodletting.” He grinned conspiratorially, “I’ll spare you today, my lady of the lake.”
Brienne nodded and furrowed her brow, “Lady of the lake?”
He laughed, “I don’t know your name.”
“Your name.”
“Very well, my name is Ser Jaime Lannister. I am a knight in these lands.”
“These lands?”
“Yes, these lands. Did you think they were yours?” Ser Jaime’s face morphed into an expression of deference, “The lands belong to Queen Cersei, first of her name, other half of my soul, my reflection."
"Reflection?"
"My reflection, my twin, my---"
Brienne's eyes glazed over slightly, it sounded exhausting being another half of a soul. His enthusiasm though, she thought as she watched him go on in ostentatious declaration, was infectious.
He looked like he was made for love.
*****
He kept coming back.
Brienne expected him to never return, that her last vision of him would be of his back walking away in the golden light of the sunset, shining face looking over one shoulder, one arm raised in farewell.
It was romantic, she mused, that Jaime would be an event in her rather quiet life and nothing more.
But he kept coming back. They always sparred and then he would talk. He talked enough for both of them, and she listened and echoed and made faces in return. The romanticism in it was shattered with his neverending remarks and japes and stories.
He kept coming back.
They sparred.
She would yield often, most days, all days, she's not counting but she's lasting longer and longer as time goes on.
He spoke.
She echoed.
They sparred.
He spoke.
His brother had discovered her name, Jaime said one day, weeks into knowing each other. He was a librarian, and he knew a lot about real things, and had read that Brienne of Tarth had hidden herself in the forest with the meadow and the lake.
"Brienne," He had said with a toothy smile, brightening when he saw her face and she echoed her name. "Brienne, Brienne, Brienne." He chanted.
They laughed.
Her name felt like an inside joke, a secret handshake, a promise on his lips.
He kept backing back.
He regaled her with tales of knights and gods and legends.
They sparred, later and later into his visits it seemed.
She echoed back what she could. He wasn't stupid; he put together her curse in a short amount of time.
It didn't bother him at all. He kept coming back.
The Jaime event turned into a Jaime summer, and Brienne couldn't recall half the conversations they'd had on that soft grassy knoll, only the soft melody of his voice as it reverberated inside her ribs and the way the sun seemed to follow him when he went.
*****
This was their longest bout yet. The sun dwindled beyond the hill and twilight seemed to fall over them like a mist; golden hues bled into purples and blues.
There were no words here, no true words, just the song of their swords, and they were singing to each other.
They were both smiling.
Brienne saw the opening, a tear in his technique that she would have never seen that first day. She took it, pressed her strength against his blade, sent it flying, pressed her knee against his chest, sent them down, tipped her blade against his neck, their breath ragged. Around them, the sky was purple and blue, and the first stars were there to witness her first victory. Brienne's blood was singing and Jaime was staring up at her, eyes bright and green and wide, like he was seeing the night sky for the first time in his life.
"Brienne--" he shuddered.
And then.
"So this is where Ser Jaime has been spending his days, instead of serving his queen." An ugly voice spoke emerging from the darkness of the wood, "We've been given orders, Ser Jaime."
"She must be a witch as well as a beast," Another ugly voice croaked, "Look at her. Best to put her down and appease the queen of her frustration."
A third voice reprimanded, "An impossible thief, how could you steal from the Golden Queen? You know the days belong to her, as does this knight."
The burning across her face came like a flash of lightning. A punch, a kick, a scream, Jaime's scream? Hers?
"NO!" Jaime bellowed. And he threw his arm across her, saving her from a killing blow.
"No!" She echoed, shredded in emotion. She grasped her sword, gathered her wits, swung as she knew. One was dead before the body hit the ground, the other two yelled in alarm. Jaime's screams were still ringing in her ear. The second. The third. And then Brienne stood alone in the middle, bleeding from her cheek, Jaime grasping at his arm on the ground.
*****
He didn't leave.
They didn't spar.
She couldn't speak.
She did what she could, what she knew. She washed him, bandaged him, held him until his shuddering had subsided. She washed herself, bandaged herself, buried the dead along with his hand.
She prayed for no infection. She hasn't prayed in a long time.
Day in and day out, as he sat listlessly in the corner of her cottage in the meadow, in the forest, on the lake. She forced him up every day, to walk, to sit, to lay amongst the flowers in the sun. Every night he would shiver in his sleep, cry for his reflection, cry for Brienne. He was an echo of his former self.
So she shoved him in the lake.
When he came up sputtering, he yelled hoarsely, "What?! What now? I cannot be a Lord of the Lake, so what would you have of me?!"
Brienne was so pleased to hear him speak, she only smiled smally. It only angered Jaime more.
"You think I could live after this? That she will take me back? My hand is gone? I cannot even spar with you anymore. And I am not a perfect symmetry in any sense. Look! Look at your face!" She winced. "Look at my hand, there's nothing there! And yet you drag me through the meadow, you force me to breathe, to eat, to drink?! You think I could live after this?!"
"Live after this," She echoed with a nod.
Jaime stared at her.
And then he left.
*****.
And then he came back. Furious as he had been the first time he stomped into her corner of the forest. Raging as if he had never paused from their last conversation.
Brienne had never been so happy to hear his stupid rambling and accusations.
"Were they right? Are you a witch as well as a beast?" Jaime yelled. She winced again, and he looked sorry as soon as it came from his mouth.
He sank to his knees where the grass was worn, where they had sparred all summer, where they had sat for hours talking in a way only they knew how.
“I went back," He started, voice quiet and wet, "But my reflection was no longer welcoming. She no longer wanted me. My queen. She had moved on, I had taken too long. I thought I would be broken. I am broken. " He looked at her again, "I wasn't broken. I was uncleaved. And after all of it I could think about was you. It didn't make sense!"
"Make sense." She replied gently.
"You don't understand! I love her! I have to love her. We belong together! We're two halves of the same soul. You don’t choose who you love." Somewhere in the middle, his voice shattered, confused, "You don't choose who you love.”
Brienne reached forward and gently grasped Jaime's stub into her hands. He looked up startled, as if she had doused him in cold water instead of simply holding the ugliest, most honorable part of him.
“Choose who you love,” Brienne echoed with volition.
Jaime, whose chest was heaving, was now hardly breathing, stared straight into her with eyes she grew to love, verdant with emotion she didn't have the words for. With his good hand he slowly reached for her face and held her ruined cheek, caressing it with the gentle fragility of a ripple on a lake.
"Brienne," he murmured, a breath away from her lips.
He kissed her.
It was chaste, and drier than Brienne expected, a bit a pressure, a brush, and then he pulled away only to press his forehead against hers. He was gazing at her in a way that a million words could not describe; she needed none.
And then she spoke her first true word since she had been cursed.
"Jaime," She breathed.