CHAPTER 11: IN THY ARMS

post s7

warning: heavy angst ahead, as in no fluff at all

All the sounds around him seemed so far away. Muted and muffled, not a single sound breaking through his mental haze. Though his mind had recognized the crowd gathered around him.

He thought he heard the words kingslayer, oathbreaker, man without honor, sisterfucker being hissed by the crowd of onlookers around him. But they didn't matter, all of that did not matter except for the executioner's block waiting for him at the end of his walk, beside it was the mother of dragons herself. He supposed he should at least be grateful meeting his death this way, rather than being roasted alive by her children. At least the north men were stickler in their ways.

He had come to the north, thoughts of warning the dragon queen and the bastard king of his dear sister's sick betrayal, and a certain blue-eyed wench powered his journey. He knew from the moment he jumped on his horse, Honor—how apt, he thought wryly—that this would be his fate come the day he finally stepped foot again in Winterfell after all those years.

However, despite knowing that the day of his reckoning would finally come he could not help but regret all those times that he wasted. He should have gone with the wench when he sent her off to her quest to find the Stark sisters. Or better yet, he should never have gone back to King's Landing at all. He should have stayed with Brienne. All of his should haves and what ifs did not matter now seeing that he would meet his end one way or another.

Reaching the executioner's block, he laid his head upon the block of wood and raised his head and spied the crowd, hoping to catch a last glimpse of those sapphire eyes that always gazed at him with trust. His sweeping gazed stopped the moment he saw Brienne standing at the back. His execution certainly gathered quite a crowd but that did not deter him from easily spotting her. Those eyes that always looked at him with trust and an emotion that he dared not name in the past was now full of hurt. For a moment, he was confused, but his eyes widened a fraction, suddenly remembering that time in the dragon pit when he brushed her off. He had to, Cersei was looking at them, damn it! He thought he was being obvious that time—despite his words, the way he looked in her blue eyes held a thousand words, words that said I'm sorry, I will try my best, I'll be the man that you believe me to be, I love you.

So the wench was not able to understand him at all. Seven hells, he refused to die knowing Brienne thought that she was nothing to him. She is everything. And she must know that. He was about to call for her, to explain to her, to finally tell Brienne that she's all that he yearned for, albeit unknowingly for the first few years they were apart, when he was cut off by the Targaryen queen.

"Any last words, Kingslayer?"

Though Jaime's first instinct was to further antagonize the dragon queen—she looked so smug, for the gods' sake!—he chose that opportunity to come clean to Brienne and looked at her square in the eyes.

"I apologize for my sister's betrayal—" the crowd broke into angry hisses at this and his next words were almost swallowed by the noise if not for the bastard king's angry glare. So Jaime shouldered on without breaking eye contact with Brienne, "but I made a vow to someone to fight for the living and I refuse to break that oath, and so here I am." Again, the crowd broke into angry hisses. They snorted and spat at him, shouting the words that labeled the life he lived the moment he shoved a sword into the back of his king.

It was the dragon queen who silenced the crowd this time when she raised her hand.

"You want us to believe that you, an oathbreaker, refuse to break an oath? You jest, Kingslayer." Daenerys sneered. "Tell the truth. Tell us why you are here. Were you sent to spy on us by your false queen? Is this some ploy of hers?"

All that time, he had not broken eye contact with Brienne, wanting to convey with his eyes the things left unsaid between them. Jaime refused to be veered off course by this little silver-haired queen, he knew this would be his last chance.

"I once told Ser Bronn that all I ever wanted was to die in the arms of the woman I love. But alas, that is not to be." He smiled at Brienne. Her eyes were now brimming with tears—due to hurt or regret, he could not tell. It did not matter to him, so long as she would be the last person he sees before he meets the Stranger.

His words only seemed to anger the dragon queen more for she gestured to the bastard king to go on to his beheading already. As he heard the king raise his Valyrian steel sword, he looked up at Brienne one last time and mouthed the words, I love you, to her, smiling and letting a single tear drop from his eyes. The image of Brienne's disbelieving eyes and her frantic shout of "NO!" was the last thing he saw before his world went black.

fin

A/N: sorry!