lodessa | Ficlet: Sapphires and Emeralds

Title: Sapphires and Emeralds
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Rating: General
Character(s): Brienne
Word Count: 499
Summary: Back on Tarth...
Notes: Written for

zoeiona during a ficlet exchange.

Tarth was a beautiful place. Yet, it seemed to Brienne to be every bit as much of a prison as when she was a girl. The servants were getting used to her giving orders, but Brienne knew they would like it better if she'd brought home a lord husband to give them for her.

Instead, she'd brought home a child, too old to be her own and far too fair. The whispers went about anyway. Let them whisper, they'd never guess the truth; this was one oath she could keep. Tommen, or Arrick as he was now called, seemed to have adjusted well to life on the Sapphire Isle. He seemed content enough to play with the other children and mind the maester during lessons; he never gave the slightest indication of missing being a king. Brienne felt ill at ease nonetheless. She did not know how to relate to children, and her awkwardness with the boy was all the greater because every time she looked at him, all golden curls and emerald eyes, she was reminded of Jaime.

So she kept to herself, but could not let go of the last time she'd seen him, battle stirring and him begging her to abandon the fight ahead and smuggle the child out of here as he could not. Tommen would surely have been killed as a usurper if she had not. Brienne wondered sometimes if Jaime had once been so innocent and simple as the boy: before incest, before regicide, before his change of heart and loss of hand. She'd wanted to stay. Fleeing like a woman fit Brienne poorly. Leaving him behind had only made it harder. She knew he must be dead. She knew that the words she'd cut off, stopping him before he could finish, were the last chance he had to tell her anything.

She knew he was dead, but imagined him on every boat. Those were the good days, when she didn't get sucked back in to self loathing and imagining him fled, leaving her with his burdens and escaping to freedom. Brienne didn't let herself indulge these fits, but sometimes she dreamed them anyway. Then she would mentally chastise herself and work harder at running her lands. She would force herself to go down and see the boy. He was not a natural swordsman, but she taught him herself, none the less; it was all she had to give him from herself. She was no mother, no gentle lady to bestow affection.

Arrick never complained. That was something. He would make a good lord for Tarth someday. He would make a better master than she, if the maesters were to be believed. Brienne saw no malice that would make a cruel taskmaster, she saw no hate or vanity; she saw little of Jaime. He would be a good man, despite them both, despite his mother. Perhaps, when he came of age, she might go traveling once more.

She never stopped watching the approaching sails.