Chapter Text
Her soulmark is a sword. That isn’t such a surprise. The surprise is that she has one at all.
Hers appears when she’s eight years old. One of her soccer teammates spots it when she’s wearing a tank top at practice. It’s on her left shoulderblade, just out of reach.
Everyone’s soulmarks are different, though there’s a whole industry devoted to “experts” arguing back and forth about what it all means. Can you tell what kind of love it will be by the placement of the mark? If you get the mark early, does that mean you’ll meet your soulmate soon? If it’s black and white, does that mean your soulmate will die? There’s evidence supporting every argument, and there are exceptions to every assertion, and the whole thing is such a mess that most people don’t even care about soulmarks anymore – there’s also a whole industry devoted to removing them.
Brienne doesn’t go looking for guidance; she doesn’t want to know. She’s just happy it exists. She has to do some creative yoga with a handheld mirror to see it, and she does it often, just wanting to be reminded. The blade of the sword shimmers. It’s almost gold, and it sparkles in the light from her bathroom. It almost looks like firelight being cast over it. There’s a red gem in the center of the hilt. She stands in her bathroom mirror and holds the handheld one up, angling it just right so she can see the sword.
I have a soulmate. Me. Someone will love me.
By the time she’s a junior in high school, the soul mark is old news. She got hers earlier than most of her peers. Her closest friends, Robb and Sansa, both got theirs in their respective first years of high school. Their cousin Jon got his at twelve. His best friend Sam Tarly yelped aloud in chemistry three weeks ago when a symbol appeared on the inside of his wrist. Brienne’s has been around since she was eight. Most people probably don’t even remember she has one.
Her father had been kind when she was younger. He told her that she would grow into her looks. He said that every girl is awkward and ungainly at eight, and ten, and thirteen. He will probably one day tell her that every woman is awkward at thirty. He never made her feel like she didn’t deserve a soulmark, though she still remembers his surprise when she told him that she had one. Everyone she has mentioned it to since then has been less kind.
She and Robb barely knew each other when she got it. It was the first year she was on his rec soccer team. She punched him in the arm after he laughed at the idea that a girl and big as ugly as her could have a soulmate. His mother Catelyn was mortified, and she grounded him and scolded him fiercely in front of everyone – which just made Brienne feel worse – and then she invited Brienne and her dad out for ice cream to try and make amends. It could have been terrible, except Robb’s little sister Sansa was there too. Sansa was too polite and romantically minded to agree with Robb. She practically swooned over the idea that a boy could fall in love with Brienne at any moment, and she insisted that a young soulmark was lucky. She has always been the one who tempers the rest of her siblings, so Robb came around by the time they finished their cones, and his second apology was much more sincere than the one his mother had forced out of him.
You just have to have a thicker skin, her father told her after. Have more of a sense of humor. She probably doesn’t have much more of one at seventeen than she did when she was eight, but Robb has enough good humor for the both of them.
King’s Landing is a big enough school that it’s easy to avoid bumping into the people you don’t like, but Sansa’s made things harder by trying out for cheerleading. Robb was pained when she announced her intentions, not because of the sport itself, but because he was afraid for his younger sister.
“Throwing her to the lions,” he calls it.
“One lion,” Brienne reminds him. They’re watching Sansa’s tryouts from the tops of the bleachers in the gym, sharing a bag of soggy fries from the pizza place down the street. Cersei Lannister, head cheerleader, sits looking bored as Sansa perfectly performs a routine she choreographed herself. Robb and Brienne are irritated on her behalf. They and Jon spent hours helping Sansa practice. Cersei could at least pretend to watch the giddy sophomore.
“The brother’s worse,” Robb insists. Brienne scoffs. She finds her eyes on Cersei’s twin, where he lounges against the wall beside the locker room door, looking artfully bored as always, with his perfect jawline and his golden curls. His green eyes are too far away to see from the bleachers, but of course he has green eyes. He’s the larval stage of a romance novel cover model. He’s a football player, so of course Robb hates him, to say nothing of the fact that he pushes peoples’ buttons like he’s hoping for a passing grade in it. Jaime Lannister is gorgeous, like his sister, and he’s cruel like her too. But Brienne prefers his insults. They’re straightforward and not very clever. Yes, she’s ugly and coarse and broad-shouldered. What of it? They’re the kind of insults she’s used to hearing, and they have become background noise. It’s the cloying kindness from Cersei that makes her feel powerless.
“I’ll take the brother any day,” she says.
Sansa makes the team, because of course she makes the team, and suddenly Cersei Lannister is everywhere. She’s waiting to talk to Sansa in the morning when Brienne normally goes to Sansa’s locker. She’s driving Sansa home after school in her Audi. She’s showing up to the Stark house on weekends while Robb and Brienne and Jon are huddled around the TV in the living room. The boys get tense whenever Jaime’s present, but they ignore Cersei entirely when she’s alone. Brienne wishes she could; their indifference seems to piss her off, while Brienne’s fear only makes her sharper. “She senses blood in the water,” Jon says to her once. “You can’t let her get to you.” If only it was that easy.
It’s worse because Sansa doesn’t seem to notice. She’s always been a bit flighty and naive, Sansa. Catelyn says that being friends with Brienne – no-nonsense, rational, dutiful Brienne – has helped Sansa, but it hasn’t helped her that much. Sansa hears Cersei’s words, and she takes their flattery to be truth, and she blushes happily over compliments that aren’t earnestly meant. So when Cersei calls Brienne “so interesting. So unique” in that sweet way she has, Sansa beams at Brienne in agreement. Jaime, leaning against a wall nearby, laughs.
It’s not like they don’t try to protect Sansa. But she gets annoyed with Robb when he suggests that Cersei might not be a good choice of friend, and it doesn’t help that their little sister Arya insists that Cersei slapped one of the family dogs when it got too close to her. “Like a proper slap. Nymeria cried,” she says, but Sansa refuses to believe it, because Arya has a habit of making things up, and she and Arya have a tumultuous relationship at best. The baby brothers Bran and Rickon are more easily bought: they think the Lannisters are wonderful because Jaime threw a football around with them one time while he was waiting for his sister. Jon doesn’t like either of them, but his ability to pretend at neutrality is legendary.
“If Cersei’s the friend she wants, then Cersei’s the friend she should have,” he says staidly, to the boos and incredulous guffaws of the rest of them, except for Sansa, who cheers and moves seats so she’s beside Jon on the comfortable couch instead of on the floor with Robb. She sticks her tongue out at Robb and Brienne, after; her allegiance is easily bought.
Theon Greyjoy, who has been living in the Stark basement and seems to irritate everyone but Robb and Sansa and sometimes Catelyn, is serene about it.
“She’ll figure it out eventually,” he says one day, flipping through a magazine. “I’m not worried.”
Sansa would call Brienne and Robb and Jon her best friends, with an occasional allowance for Arya if they’re feeling nice, but she’s always been one of those girls who seems to make friends in every class she has. Pretty girls like Margaery Tyrell. Fierce, rebellious girls like Shae and Ros. She introduced Brienne to Renly Baratheon and his boyfriend, Margaery’s brother Loras, and they’re easily her closest friends aside from the Starks. They both take jousting classes and they spend half their weekends at fucking heroic fairs, where they dress up like people living during the Age of Heroes. Brienne has no idea how Sansa met them.
(she considered, briefly, before she realized why Renly and Loras spent so much time together, that Renly might be the other bearer of her soulmark, but his is a deer antler nestled in blue flowers, and he wears it proudly on his arm, and is very gay besides.)
Despite her eclectic collection of pals, Sansa has enough social grace to know not to mix groups if she doesn’t want disaster. So it’s irritating and a bit baffling that she doesn’t see the issue with insisting that Brienne attend her sleepover when Cersei Lannister is also going to be there.
“She likes you,” Sansa insists. “She says you’re interesting.”
Brienne sighs, and she doesn’t say that Cersei just likes to use her to sharpen the sword of her wit, like sparring except instead of blades she’s using her tongue, and instead of training to learn how to fight, she’s training to learn how to be a heinous pain in the ass to anyone who might be beneath her, socially.
But it’s Sansa, who is honored that Cersei wants to come to her sleepover, and she looks at Brienne with her big blue eyes and her pleading expression, and Brienne caves.
Luckily for Brienne, there’s one person invited to the sleepover who Cersei appears to bitterly loathe, so Brienne fades into the background more than she’s ever been able to in her life. Sansa chats with Shireen Baratheon and Jeyne Poole on the other side of the room, and Brienne remains pinned in place on the other, watching the verbal tennis between Cersei Lannister and Margaery Tyrell. Margaery is honey-voiced and sweeter than Cersei at her most fake, and she makes all her barbs sound like innocent flowers drifting down to carpet the ground she walks on. She’s prettier than Cersei in a delicate way, though Cersei has her beat for outright, in-your-face beauty, Brienne thinks. Not that she’s any great judge, but Cersei’s looks have never been her problem. Still, under Margaery’s critical eyes, not even Cersei’s beauty is safe, and the head cheerleader actually looks browbeaten for once. It’s a masterclass in the kind of petty fighting that Brienne has never had much time for, and she’s fascinated. She considers going downstairs to grab some popcorn.
While she’s brutal to Cersei, Margaery extends only kindness to Brienne, without any of the mocking that Brienne has come to expect from most people outside the Stark clan. She talks about Loras and Renly’s latest trip to a heroic fair, and she unironically suggests that Brienne should go with them and fight in one of the fake tournaments they do.
“You'd look amazing swinging a sword,” she says, admiring. “Lord knows you’re built for it. I’d love to watch you fight! I know you’re not interested in women – I asked Loras a while back – but I would be honored to play your lady love for an evening. I love getting dressed up in those pretty dresses, and it would be so romantic! Just imagine how fun it would be to switch up their ideas of courtly love. I could kiss you on the cheek and give you a handkerchief as a favor to wear in the melee. I could swoon dramatically every time you took a hit!”
She mimes swooning with the back of one hand pressed to her forehead, and then she winks happily at Brienne, who blushes and laughs and finds herself agreeing. Cersei continues to glower, because Margaery’s cheerful bisexuality is another thing that ups her social capital, while Cersei’s string of brief romances with football players have all been deemed cliché and uninteresting by most of the student body.
“It’s funny you say that about Brienne,” Sansa says. “Because of her soulmark.”
Cersei laughs aloud, harsher than usual, and everyone is taken aback for a moment before she recovers.
“Oh gosh, is it a whole picture of a knight?” she asks, pleasant mask back in place. “How big is it? I imagine that would be rather ungainly. Difficult to hide if you wanted to.”
“Can I show them?” Sansa asks. Brienne hesitates, but Sansa’s eyes are kind, and so she nods. She turns around, and Sansa pulls the back of her t-shirt down far enough that the sword will be visible. Brienne hears the other girls crowding around, and cold fingers reach out and touch it. Margaery, most likely. She’s the only one bold enough. The other girls sigh and coo over it. More cold fingers join the first, these ones with fingernails just sharp enough to scratch. Cersei. Brienne jerks away from the slight pain, and she covers the mark up again. When she turns back to face them, she catches the look on Cersei’s face before it flickers back into impassivity. For a moment, it’s disgusted. It’s bizarrely angry. Like just the idea of someone loving Brienne is abhorrent.
Margaery has fallen back on Sansa’s bed, clutching her hands to her chest.
“Now we simply must go to the heroic fair!” she proclaims. “Where else are you to meet your knight with his bejewelled longsword?”
She simpers while the other girls laugh, and Brienne looks away from Cersei’s loathing, and she laughs with them, because she knows that Margaery is not mocking her.
As the night goes on, she forgets Cersei’s reaction entirely.
“Are they seriously here again?” Robb asks, glaring over at the sidelines where the Lannister twins are holding court with a bunch of their friends. It’s too far away to hear their words, but you don’t need to. Their mocking is obvious.
“They have to be seen in public as often as possible if they’re going to have a shot at Cutest Couple,” Theon drawls, taking a swig of water and leaning back against the bench. He raises his eyebrows at Robb, who laughs. Brienne slumps next to him, trying to make herself small. She missed a shot early in the first half, and the Lannisters’ piercing laughter has followed her since.
“Maybe it’s like psychological warfare,” Sam suggests. He holds his assistant coach clipboard in front of him like he’s got anything to write down on it; despite Brienne’s earlier goof, King’s Landing is crushing it. “They want to try and make you lose so the football team looks better?”
“They’re just being assholes,” Jon says. He looks at Brienne, who’s still probably beet red and hideous from the mingling of exertion and embarrassment. “Don’t let them get to you.”
“I wish Sansa’d stop hanging out with them,” Brienne sighs, and Jon smiles.
“Me too,” he admits.
In the several weeks following the sleepover, Cersei has been everywhere. And she’s perfected this almost elegant attack, a two-pronged thing with her brother.
“It’s so good to see you trying something new with your hair,” she says sweetly, the day Brienne shows up with a haircut she’s actually a little happy with. “Doesn’t Sansa’s little friend look nice, Jaime?”
She pulls him by the arm to get him to look up from his phone. He gives himself a second to take it in, looking Brienne up and down critically.
“Not really,” he says with a slow-spreading grin. Brienne doesn’t react; she never reacts. She just turns and walks away. This new thing Cersei’s doing is boring. It’s pathetic. It hurts, but only because she lets it. Only because they apparently hate her so much, and she doesn’t understand why. So she’s ugly. Why does it bother the Lannisters so much? Can’t they just be content with their own beauty?
“They’ll drop it eventually,” Jon says.
“I’ll make them drop it if they don’t,” Robb swears.
“Cersei is just really insecure,” Sansa explains in a whisper that says even she doesn’t really believe it.
Brienne just keeps her head down, and she keeps showing up to soccer practice and kicking ass in games. She goes to some heroic fairs with Renly and Loras and Margaery, and she starts learning how to swordfight from an actual expert in ancient battle strategy who Renly introduces her to. She runs soccer drills with Arya and Bran and Rickon. She’s kind to her father, and to his ever-changing roster of girlfriends, and to her second family: The Starks. She keeps getting good grades, and she keeps ignoring anything that anyone else says about her. That’s all she can do. She’s never going to be pretty, but she’s not going to let them make her unkind.
She has a soulmark. She will be loved. She will fall in love. She just has to be patient.
Things have finally begun to calm down on the harassment front when Brienne has the misfortune of being partnered with Jaime Lannister on a project. It’s Westerosi history, which is one of the few classes Jaime and Cersei aren’t in together. It’s consequently the only class in which he’s mildly tolerable, because he likes the subject and occasionally says things that aren’t just bored, unserious jokes. Their teacher actually likes him. His grade isn’t great, but he always gets high marks for enthusiasm.
Mr. Selmy probably thinks he’s doing them both a favor when he partners them. They’re two of his most engaged students, he says with pride, and they’ve both shown an interest in art during the Age of Heroes, so that’s what they’re assigned. Jaime turns around in his seat on the other side of the room to grin at her, savage and sharklike. Brienne just sighs and looks away.
AOH weaponry as an artform, she writes, and she drowns out the rest of the class as she begins to structure her paper.
After class, as Brienne is packing up, Jaime slides into the seat in front of her. He does so with the casual, slithering grace with which he does everything, and he crosses his arms over the chair, resting his chin on top of them as he looks at her. She stares at him, waiting. It occurs to her suddenly that she’s never had a conversation with him that wasn’t prompted by his sister. Not in years, anyway. Maybe when they were in elementary school. She was on his tee-ball team at one point. He was nice, then. But most kids were probably nice when they were six. She remembers showing him how to swing the bat. She was probably six inches taller than him at the time. Now it’s less than half an inch.
“What’s the plan?” he asks. She feels a sense of equilibrium being restored. Yes, this makes sense. She’ll be doing most of the work, if not all of it, but he probably needs a good grade in this class, so he wants to make sure she’s on top of it. If she didn’t also want a good grade, she might make him actually contribute. But she likes Selmy’s class, and she likes the topic she decided on, and fighting with Jaime Lannister isn’t worth it.
“I’ve written down an idea,” she says, not looking at him. “Art in armor from the Age of Heroes. The decorations, ornamentation. Things the people of Westeros did to mark their armor. A lot of the houses included their iconography in their weapons and armor, and some of it was pretty detailed.”
“I like it,” Jaime says. She chances a look at him, and he seems sincere enough.
“I’ve got a couple of sources already that we can use,” she continues warily. She points at the top one in her notebook with her pen. “There’s an exhibition of weaponry through the ages in the city. I’ve heard it’s supposed to be good, and the museum has a decent collection of swords and armor even outside the exhibition. Selmy likes initiative on things like that, and I would have probably gone to check it out anyway, so I’ll do that this weekend and take pictures we can use in our report. He’ll like that we have original pictures. Plus.” She moves her pen down to her second note. She can feel his eyes on her, and she wishes he’d look away. “I know an armorer.”
“You know an armorer?” He asks incredulously.
“His name’s Goodwin. Renly Baratheon introduced us a few weeks back.” Brienne very carefully doesn’t mention that Goodwin is crafting her a set of replica armor for a heroic fair, and also that he’s been teaching her to fight like a proper warrior. She’s not ashamed of it, but she’s not giving Jaime Lannister ammo he doesn’t need. “He knows everything. He has a doctorate.”
“In making armor?”
“Ancient battle strategy and arms.”
“Huh. All right. So what can he do for us, then? Make us armor?”
“No. I mean, he’s…” she hesitates, almost telling him. He sounds almost excited about the armor. Maybe he won’t laugh. But that’s a hell of an assumption. “He’s capable of it, but no. But, I can get an interview. Selmy’s not looking for anything outrageous. We can get away with an overview of weapons and armor and a few paragraphs about symbolism. Quotations from a real expert are above and beyond as it is.”
She finally looks up at him, waiting, and he’s looking at her with open amusement, already half laughing. She sighs again, and his expression stutters slightly.
“No, no,” he says quickly. “This is amazing, don’t get me wrong. You’re very thorough.”
“But?” she asks, one eyebrow up.
“But what?”
“But I’m very boring? Or geeky? Or a freak for thinking this is interesting? Or was it one of the old staples? Like that I’m ugly, and mannish, and my freckles are annoying, and my teeth are too big? Or my shoulders? Or my very flat chest?”
She waits, feeling cold inside, like Catelyn Stark every time she has to face down their horrible neighbor Old Man Frey. Deadly calm, and she looks Jaime Lannister in his stupidly pretty green eyes, and she sits up straight. I’m bigger than him, she thinks. I’m going to get an A on this project, and I’m very good at soccer, and my grades are better than his, and I even have more friends. All he has are his looks and his sister, and I’m fine without either of those things. Jaime Lannister can’t scare me.
He looks astonished now, and he blinks at her, staring into her eyes. He licks his lips and looks away.
“I’m sorry,” she says dryly. “Did I take all your material? You should ask your sister for some new insults. Hers are always cleverer, anyway.”
He laughs, disbelieving. It’s shaky, almost. She has surprised him.
“All right,” he says. “You’ve made your point.” He holds out his hand, as if to shake, and she stares at him.
“What?”
“I propose a truce.”
“A truce?”
“A truce. No more insults while we're partners on this thing.”
“Bit of a one-sided truce, seeing as how I don’t insult you.”
“Well, then, don’t start. No calling me stupid, or anything.”
“I have never called you stupid.”
“Not to my face.”
“I’ve called you plenty of things without having to resort to attacks on your intelligence,” Brienne says primly. Jaime laughs again. He still looks vaguely surprised.
“I’d love to hear them,” he says. The bell rings, announcing lunch. They’re alone in the room. Even Selmy is gone. Brienne gathers her things, and Jaime waits for her. “Well, go on.”
“I’m not going to insult you.”
“Shake, then. Truce.”
She sighs, not really believing in it, but she shifts the weight of her books so she can shake his hand.
“If you insult me, am I allowed to punch you?” she asks.
“You’ve always been allowed to punch me. I’m surprised you haven’t. But yes, I’ll write that into the official bylines, or whatever you call the rules of a truce.”
Brienne rolls her eyes and heads into the hall, and Jaime follows her, walking by her side.
“Just,” he says. “I want to get a good grade on his paper. I need one, actually.” He’s embarrassed, she realizes. She looks away from him, because she doesn’t like how earnest he looks.
“We’ll get a good grade,” she says. “And I won’t call you stupid, if it means that much.”
“And I won’t say any of those terrible things I’ve said before,” he says brightly. “And when it’s over, I want to hear those insults you’ve called me behind my back. But Tyrion’s off-limits even when we’re not in truce. I’m fair game, though. I love it when…”
“Tyrion?” Brienne asks, stopping to look at him. “Why would I say anything bad about Tyrion?”
He pauses. He smiles again, but it’s not the usual mocking smirk. It’s strange. Blinding. Like it’s sincere. Like he’s breathless.
“Right,” he says, and he looks down at his feet, almost bashful. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
“I like your brother,” she continues, flabbergasted. “I would never…whatever you’ve heard I’ve said, or whatever makes you think I’ve said something, it’s not true.”
“No, I haven’t heard anything,” Jaime says quickly. “I was just…making sure. I want you to insult me, but I don’t like opening him up to that. People can be cruel.”
She favors him with a deeply ironic look that makes him laugh. It’s loud enough to draw the attention of a few stragglers who haven’t made it to the cafeteria yet. There are some double takes and pitying glances. They think he’s making fun of her, of course. She flushes and keeps walking, and he yet again keeps pace. She wants to shoo him off like an unwanted stray dog, but that would make it worse.
“People can be cruel,” she mutters, and he laughs again.
“I’m sorry. I should have remembered who I’m talking to. You might have a lot in common, you and Tyrion. Height difference aside.”
Brienne sighs loudly again.
“Is this just a ploy to make me let my guard down so you can do something terrible?” she asks. “Because I want this grade too, and I’m not going to let you tank it just so you and your sister can make another attempt to put me down.”
“No,” Jaime insists, trying for sincere. “I shook on it. I meant it.”
“And your word means so much?”
“Well, it’s not nothing.”
Jaime Lannister is notorious for beating up the old captain of the football team. Luring him into the locker room and absolutely kicking the shit out of him. Hospitalizing him. He was only a freshman, and Aerys a senior. Three years later, and people still call him Kingslayer because of it. There’s no way he won that fight without playing dirty. She considers mentioning this, but she doesn’t.
“So when are we going?”
She hears his question, but it doesn’t register for a moment. When it does, she stops walking again. At this rate, they’ll never make it to lunch.
“Going where?” she asks.
“To the museum. And to talk to your armorer friend.”
“You want to come?”
They’re both as confused as the other, and Jaime tilts his head slightly back to regard her.
“Did you not think I would? What was I meant to be doing on this project, then?”
“I don’t know, I figured you could pull a few quotes from whatever they have in the library. Or write up a portion, and I’d add my stuff to it.” He looks vaguely upset, and actually weirdly hurt, and Brienne has always been too weak for her own good, so she hastens to add, “of course you can come, if you want. I just didn’t think you would.” That doesn’t seem to help, so she blurts, “you hate me,” as if to remind him of something he should already know.
Jaime actually jerks in surprise at that, and his eyes widen.
“I don’t hate you,” he says. Concedes, “Cersei hates you. I’m just mean to you. But I can see how you might have gotten that impression.”
She hopes that the stare she levels in his direction adequately conveys just how unimpressed she is by that distinction.
He sticks his hand out again, grinning a little.
“Another truce?” she asks.
“A promise.”
She takes his hand with another irritated sigh.
“A promise to…?”
“To never hate you,” he says, very seriously, and he affects a strange, almost courtly bow, and he raises the back of her hand to his lips, and he locks eyes with her when he kisses it.
“Where’ve you been?” Robb asks when she finally sits down at their table.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” she admits, and she can feel from the heat of her face that she’s still blushing. At this point, she’s not sure she’ll ever stop.