❝ i’ll sit right here, till you start talking ❞
‘ there is nothing to speak of, ’ the words are half-spat, and it comes out bitter, like a rock trying too hard to ebb between her buck teeth.
the sword she’s polishing — oathkeeper — is heavy in her grip, the weight of it an assurance that is almost relieving as much as it hurts. even now, moons passed, the grief of having lost.... having lost him... sticks to her worse, worse than the time ser connington had given her that damn flower and told her with such blatancy that that was all he would ever gift her. she had thought nothing would ever be worse. then of course, renly has passed.
and jaime... but brienne speaks not of him. and she gives the seer no glance. a seer, any other time before the war, mayhap she would have held oathkeeper outright and pointed it at him without a shadow of a doubt. she does not trust magic; it is an awful, awful thing, and has been practised in such awful, awful ways. it had taken her dear renly in a heartbeat. no, magic is a curse, but swords and armours and things — they’re reliable. they’re there. they’re something she could fight off, could chase away.
but the war. the war of the dead, but more than that, the burning of king’s landing ... brienne used to think men have used battles and uprisings as an excuse to be a poor excuse of a swordsman, of a fighter, of a protector. she cannot say the same of it now. it felt as if whatever the dead has taken, it has taken with them half of her; or perhaps it is not death at all, it is — king’s landing. king’s landing and ser jaime and a toppled keep and no body, no place to mourn, no brave and obnoxious man for her to await the summers to meet. perhaps to fight once more, just to see if he had really improved.
no, brienne does not turn her eyes to the future-seer. she is tired, heavy with ghosts.
‘ your gift is of no use to me, wizard. ’
random asks.
