@stillgotclaws | continued from (x)
It was a sweet dream at the outset, which made it all the harsher when it changed. Brienne dreamt that she met Ser Galladon of Morne, the perfect knight, with the Just Maid shining on his belt. He let her hold it and feel the weight and balance for herself. It was heavy and deadly and lighter than air. She tried to tell him that she’d have one like it someday, that she meant to be a knight, or something like it, but his expression soured as soon as she did. You’ll never be a knight, he told her, and don’t blame it on you being a woman. You may be good in the training yard, but when have you ever swung that sword when it mattered? How many lives have you managed to save? It should’ve been you that died as a child. Before she could answer he took back his enchanted sword and stuck it down through her collarbone into her heart.
Brienne was no stranger to nightmares- rather they were the closest thing she had to companions when she traveled alone. This alone would not have shaken her badly had she awoken then, but what came after was much worse. Ser Galladon’s sword had been painful beyond telling, but when she opened her eyes in the dream she was unhurt and Catelyn Stark was brushing her hair back from her face with gentle fingers. She was slender and shorter than Brienne, as all women were, but Brienne sat in Lady Catelyn’s lap as easily as a child. Her lady held her and murmured that she’d done well and was the right choice to defend Sansa and Arya. Brienne tried to protest but was interrupted again. Catelyn wouldn’t hear her apologies, only asking for her company. Brienne sat next to her now, leaning against the trunk of a weeping willow and watching soft golden light filter through its leaves. She only lost focus for a moment, but then Lady Catelyn was gone. Brienne sat up and searched for her, clouds covering the sky and an unexpected cold wind blowing her hair about. She spotted Catelyn, impossibly far away, wandering away from her down a narrow winding road. Brienne tried to run to her, but when she reached out for her shoulder it was not Lady Catelyn who turned to face her but Robb Stark, his headless body upright and dripping blood. As Brienne stumbled back in horror he was surrounded by men, laughing and trying to fit a wolf’s head onto his neck without it slipping. Stop, she cried out to them. He’s her last son, at least give him the honor of a proper burial, but they only laughed harder.
Brienne would’ve lunged at them and pulled their evil tongues from their mouths but she’d sunken thigh-deep in thick river mud and she couldn’t move. The image blurred and disappeared, swept away by the current, and Brienne was alone with no more than a few fish for company. She sagged in relief and bent forward, exhaling a slow stream of bubbles, but then something bumped against her and she gasped in a mouthful of water. Brienne grasped it and pulled it in front of her. It was Lady Catelyn, her beautiful features all rotted away, her flesh swollen and soft where Brienne's fingers held fast to her arm. Brienne was drowning, and the way Lady Catelyn’s head lolled back from her open neck made her sick, but still she tried to get free so she could pull her lady to the surface. Catelyn slipped away and drifted before her, telling her she should give up. Do you think I’m the first innocent to be murdered? she asked, a question Brienne didn’t know how to answer. Catelyn indicated the riverbed around them, and Brienne saw that it was full of bodies. Men, women, and children lay decomposing, the few intact faces twisted in pain or terror, bare bones jutting out of the mud. There was nothing she could do to help any of them, or keep countless others from joining them. The river was going to be choked with the dead, and the silt that clouded the water around them was already half made of corpses. She choked on it, trying to breathe, but it was in her eyes and nose and mouth and she could feel herself being dragged further down.
She woke with a start, feeling as though she’d been dropped from a great height onto her bed. Sweating and shivering at the same time, she kicked off her blankets and sat up. A nightmare, that’s all it was. Only a nightmare... except the worst parts of it were true. Sobs built up in her chest, slowly and painfully at first, but once she began crying in earnest they came all too easily. Brienne wept, not just for Lady Catelyn, not just for the Starks, but for all the injustice in the world, for every monstrous and cruel thing she could never put right, every one that had happened and all that was still yet to come. So absorbed was she in her grief that she was only faintly aware of Reyna’s entrance- she realized she was no longer alone in the room; she didn’t care. It wasn’t until she felt Reyna’s hand on her shoulder that Brienne looked up. Roughly she wiped her whole face with her sleeve and shook her head.
“It’s nothing like that,” she said, though Reyna’s ready fury on her behalf was very touching. “I just...” Brienne couldn’t think of a way to phrase it without feeling childish. “I don’t understand how mankind can mistreat each other so.”
