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“Brienne. How do you think you’re progressing?”
It was just the sort of open-ended, essay test question that made Brienne freeze up. Mrs. Stark was all poise, sitting across from her in an embroidered, high-back chair, but the sincerity in her clear blue eyes didn’t shake the gravel free of Brienne’s throat.
“I’m trying,” was the most honest answer she could give.
Her palms felt sweaty, and she picked at her nails so she wouldn’t wring her hands. She couldn’t stop shifting on the uncomfortable, carved wooden chair someone had left for the debs. It’s legs were several inches shorter than the legs of the coaches’ chair, but Brienne could look Catelyn Stark in the eye.
She would have felt more comfortable if there were a table between them. The small office designated for cotillion evaluations felt like an interrogation room, but offered none of the traditional comforts.
“Your dancing has seen a marked improvement,” the woman said, more matter-of-factly than anyone had since Jaime started teaching her. “Your other skills . . . need some work,” her assessment was firm, unflinching.
Brienne straightened in the heavy, straight-backed chair.
“I know.”
They’d scored her on a sheet of stationary, neat lines of notes from each coach and a commentary from Petyr Baelish that Mrs. Stark had done her best to white out. Some of the women had been almost tactful. Others not so much.
Mrs. Stark sighed, as though she could read the elegant penmanship floating behind Brienne’s eyes.
“This review is meant to be helpful,” she reminded the girl. “You have a month until the cotillion ball, two weeks until we finish dance lessons. We need to find your strengths, bolster your weaknesses.”
“Any suggestions?”
She didn’t expect Mrs. Stark to nod quite so resolutely.
“Dinner.”
“What?” Brienne furrowed her brows, stopped thumbing her ragged cuticles.
“Dinner. With my family.” Brienne must have looked alarmed, because Mrs. Stark rolled her eyes. Tastefully. “You need a structured setting, Brienne. A safe one. You know Arya and Sansa, you’ve met Robb. And Jon.” Her voice took an edge for half a second, and when it smoothed it was clear the woman wouldn’t accept a refusal. “You need courage in conversation and . . . well,” she folded her hands across her lap as if the truth could not be helped, “table manners.”
It was true. Brienne had it all in her head, but her fingers refused to cooperate when someone stuck a teacup in them.
She didn’t want to, so she nodded, bolstering her resolve.
“Thank you,” she told Mrs. Stark, who was being more generous than Brienne could have reasonably expected, “For helping.”
She wouldn’t be stuck here without Mrs. Stark’s nudges, but she also couldn’t get through it without her support.
Mrs. Stark smiled faintly.
“You’re a sweeter girl than any deb I’ve met yet,” she leaned forward in her chair, clasped Brienne’s hands in her own. “I won’t see you fail because Cersei Lannister’s got a bee in her bonnet.”
Brienne tightened her fingers around Mrs. Stark’s. The woman’s hands were warm, sturdy. Unexpectedly, Brienne felt her heart constrict.
She smiled, not trusting herself to speak.
“Now,” Mrs. Stark squeezed once, then prised her fingers free. When she stood she was all business. “I think it’s time for you to meet your dance partner.”
Brienne couldn’t help her jolt of fear. It was a silly reaction, in more ways than one. Kyle was long gone, suspended for sexual assault and fighting with another student. Catelyn Stark wouldn’t choose a partner like Kyle anyway. But the fear was there, unsoothed by the mothering crinkles running along the Cotillion Director’s face.
“Sam,” the woman raised her voice. She winced at a hollow thud that echoed through the door, but recovered to gesture towards her debutante as a large boy emerged from the hall. “This is Brienne.”
Sam blinked over at her, smiled widely.
“Hi,” he greeted, holding out a meaty hand. “Samuel Tarly.”
Brienne was so surprised by his candid civility that she stared at his offered hand for much longer than was socially appropriate. Sam’s smile grew uneasy, eyes flitting over to Mrs. Stark, and Brienne quickly grasped his palm against her own.
“Brienne Tarth,” she stumbled over her name in her haste to get it out.
Sam’s smile brightened instantaneously, good mood restored.
“It’s nice to meet you.” He lowered his voice as if he were sharing a secret, “I’m sorry your last partner was a dunce.”
Brienne felt her face freeze, and Mrs. Stark stepped smoothly forward.
“He won’t be back.”
The words had an air of finality.
“Are we done?” Brienne asked, kicking her heel against the edge of the carpet. She could feel it rise and fall under her foot. She wished controlling her breathing could be that easy.
“Have fun at hockey,” Mrs. Stark replied, shaking her head in the barest hint of amusement. “I’ll call you about dinner,” she reminded, as if the jock deb might try and wriggle her way out of it.
Brienne nodded shortly, and Mrs. Stark shuffled them from her office, closing the door to prep for her next debutante.
Out of habit, Brienne reached into her pocket for keys that weren’t there.
Her dad’s car was in the shop; he’d be using hers all week. He might have been more shocked than his daughter when she’d told him, perfectly sincere, that she was fine with hitching rides. Last semester that would have sent her into a panic spiral.
“Margaery brought me,” she remembered aloud.
“Where are you headed?” Sam looked at her curiously, following her down the hall towards the exit.
“West Eros Arena.”
She waited for him to get that look on his face, the one that said, ‘oh, you’re that freak girl who demolished Hoat,’ but it never came.
“I’ll walk you,” Sam offered.
Brienne shook her head, dragging her bag from behind a wingback chair and slinging it over her shoulder.
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t mind,” Sam shrugged awkwardly.
The heavy slope of his shoulders might have been quirkily endearing to some cutesy teenage girl, but Brienne got the distinct impression he’d roll if someone knocked him over. He’d never survive a puck drop, or even the first snap of a football game.
“I can handle whatever’s out there,” she said firmly.
Clearly Sam didn’t disagree.
“Company’s nice, though.”
Once, she might have disagreed. Once she might have tightened her lips and walked stiffly away. But Jaime and Margaery and a handful of others had ruined her for human interaction, and Sam looked earnest and a little lonely.
“Okay,” she agreed, feeling a little weird as he smiled brightly and propped the door open for her. She strode out into the sunlight, barely catching her feet so he could bustle after her.
“This dancing thing will be fun,” he chattered as they walked down the sun-warmed sidewalk towards hockey practice. “I’ve never danced before, really, but I’ve studied the foxtrot and several styles of the waltz, and it’s all very fascinating. Did you know . . .”
Brienne studied the cracks under her feet, wondering where that uncomfortable knot in her spine had gone for vacation. She kept waiting for it to crop back up, but it seemed to have disappeared into the warmth of Jaime’s shirt last week, and hadn’t returned no matter what the provocation.
Sam babbled through the first 3 blocks, but somewhere along the last 2 Brienne made herself ask, “So how’d you get pulled into this?”
“Oh,” he waved a hand dismissively, “I’m friends with Jon. He’s getting back at me for teasing him about Ygritte, but I think it’ll be fun.”
“Ygritte?”
“He’s smitten,” Sam sighed, but he was pleased, too.
Brienne figured she really didn’t want to know. For all that she kept ending up in the middle of it, gossip was not her thing.
They stepped off the sidewalk and trudged toward the half dozen cars parked in the arena’s front lot. Brienne was trying to figure out who was already there, and when Sam stopped it took her several steps to notice she was alone and turn around.
“Whoops,” Sam grinned sheepishly. “I think your boyfriend got the wrong impression.”
Brienne twisted her neck on instinct, catching her breath before she ever saw Jaime leaning against his Range Rover, well back from the other cars. She couldn’t make out his expression from this distance, but his back was straighter than the glass behind him.
Sam ducked his head, shuffling backwards on his nice leather shoes. “I’d better go before he throttles me,” he cringed.
“He’s not – “ she started, bit her lip. “We’re friends.”
Brienne braced herself for an argument, a teasing grin, a slew of double entendres. Since the disaster with Kyle, her standby disclaimer sparked an almost Pavlovian response in anyone she talked to.
Sam took pity on her.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
The words weren’t as cleansing as she’d like them to be.
“I’m looking forward our new partnership,” he said without a hint of irony.
Brienne thought she should say, ‘you too’ but she didn’t have a handle on him yet, so she kept her mouth closed. She did wave a halfhearted farewell as Sam turned to trek the 5 blocks back to the country club.
“Who’s that?” Jaime was at her elbow before she realized, green eyes trained on Sam.
“My new dance partner. He’s Jon’s friend.”
“Then I don’t like him on principle,” Jaime joked lightly.
Brienne rolled her eyes. She still couldn’t tell if Jaime’s instinctive dislike for any guy named Stark was an affectation or some weird family drama. But she’d realized months ago that arguing about it would only let him snark circles around her, his smile growing all the while.
“He’s nice,” she couldn’t help but add.
Jaime watched Sam amble up the sidewalk until he disappeared around the block.
“How was your reckoning with Mrs. Stark?” he focused on Brienne and she squirmed, caught off guard by how good he looked, smiling like that. “Did she crush all your dreams of becoming America’s Next Top Model?”
“It was fine,” she told him, turning to continue towards the arena.
They were a little early, which was a small miracle where Jaime was concerned. His dad must have been out of town on business. The sun felt nice, though, so she wandered around the corner and leaned against an old chain link fence.
The metal jostled under her as Jaime rested beside her.
“Wait,” she eyed him suspiciously. “How did you know Mrs. Stark did my progress report?”
“My mom would have told me if it was her,” Jaime shrugged. “And everyone knows they’ve got dibs.”
“Dibs on what?” she wanted to know.
His expression told her she was being willfully stupid.
“On me?”
Her sneaker slipped in the dirt, and she righted herself just as Jaime caught her. His hand was on her elbow, his cast pressed along the inside of her arm. Brienne’s heart thudded lethargically, rooted and peaceful, like she felt all over.
“You seriously didn’t realize somebody had your back, after all of Cersei’s failed plots?” Jaime rolled his eyes at her. His smile was as endearing as it was endeared.
Brienne smiled back, a surge of gratitude for Jaime and his mom and Mrs. Stark that Jaime got the brunt of.
He let her go, swinging around to her other side. The back of his cast brushed her t-shirt as he moved, and Brienne mentally tallied the weeks since the game against the Marys.
“When do you get your cast off?”
Jaime grimaced.
“They were thinking next month. Now?” he fingered his cast, frowning down, then out at the windblown side of the arena. “Fall. If I’m lucky.”
“Fall?” she repeated, edging in front of him to scrutinize his cast. Her stare was furious and intent, as if she could see right through the plaster and force the bone to heal with the resolve in her eyes.
He knocked his plaster elbow gently against her stomach, a clear sign she was overreacting.
She met his eyes firmly, not buying.
Jaime caved.
“I was sloppy with my training.”
She could tell just from his tone that he was quoting his dad.
“The bone couldn’t knit together due to constant and unnecessary tension.”
That was Dr. Qyburn’s assessment.
“And – “ Brienne swallowed, forcing down that uncomfortable feeling that she was making his life harder, “And you hit Kyle with your cast.”
Jaime tilted his head, let his shoulders rise and fall.
“That, too.”
“Jaime,” she started, but he wouldn’t let her finish.
“I couldn’t make playoffs anyway, so what does it matter?”
His eyes belied the ease of his tone, telegraphing the hurt and frustration she knew he must be feeling.
It matters, Brienne thought, eyes catching on the faded marker scratched across the crimson plaster. No one had signed it—“how 2nd grade,” Cersei had scoffed when Sansa asked—but someone had etched intricate scrollwork up and down his arm, set off by a decent likeness of the marble lions guarding the Lannisters’ front gate. It made the cast seem permanent in a way she didn’t like.
“I guess,” she grimaced. “But – “
Jaime rolled his eyes at her.
“Is this really what you want to waste your breath on?”
Brienne furrowed her pale brows, too distracted to follow.
“It’s important,” she insisted, crossing her arms and staring down at him.
“So are other things,” he answered vaguely, watching for her reaction.
Brienne frowned. He was waiting for curiosity to make her chatty, but she refused to give him the satisfaction.
Patience wasn’t exactly Jaime’s strong suit.
“You know prom’s next week.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. “So?”
She could hardly forget; the school had been overrun with last-ditch campaigning efforts. Margaery had barely attended a single cotillion all week.
If Jaime had taken a sudden interest in prom court, Brienne was going to drop out and be homeschooled.
“So . . .” he teased the word into its own zip code, looking up at her from his spot on the fence. “Tyrion thinks I should ask you.”
Brienne’s breath rasped along her throat, which was suddenly drier than it had ever been.
“My mom think so, too,” he added, the faint curve of his lip belying his careless façade.
Brienne wouldn’t have known how to respond if the script paraded itself in front of her. She couldn’t decide if he meant to laugh at the absurdity or follow through with the suggestion. Both seemed equally likely.
The air around her seemed suddenly swampy. Brienne whirled, smacking her back against the fence so hard the links rattled together. Her face was over-hot, her underarms prickling. She hoped he couldn’t tell that her t-shirt was sticking to her.
Jaime had dug up some forgotten store of patience. He seemed content to wait her out, his mouth twitching as she tried hard to breathe.
She blinked stupidly for several moments, eyes shifting from his collar, to her sneakers, to the wall before squeaking, “So are you?”
“Asking you to prom?” Jaime smiled cheekily. “No.”
She couldn’t find it in her to be surprised.
Her eyes were stinging anyway. She ground her teeth and forced away the weakness.
“I mean, it’s no secret that prom’s ridiculous,” Jaime continued casually. His sneaker nudged hers, leaving a dark smudge on his overpriced shoes. “And you’re already stuck with the cotillion ball.”
It took a minute for his words to register, for hope to stir.
“What are you asking, Jaime?” she demanded, annoyed with the yo-yoing in her gut.
“I asking you out,” he shrugged. “For prom night.”
The words hit her harder than any opponent ever had. Asking a friend to prom was one thing. But this, this was—
“But you’re on court,” she blurted, twisting her fingers together painfully. “You can’t bail.”
Jaime stiffened against the fence.
“I had no idea prom meant so much to you,” the words were cavalier, and Brienne knew she’d hurt his feelings.
“I mean,” she stuttered, trying to force the words out. “I just—“
Jaime asked you on a date, her heart screamed. Say yes.
But her brain kept morphing his face into Kyle’s, and she couldn’t move her lips.
“It’s stupid,” Jaime grunted. “Forget it.”
“Okay,” she finally managed. “Yeah, I’ll—I—”
She gave up and nodded, hoping he’d get the picture.
“Don’t do me any favors,” he pushed himself to his feet, and the fence dipped behind Brienne, dropping her stomach to the ground between them.
“I’m not. I mean—“ she worried her lip. Her eyes felt funny, like they weren’t sure if they’d end up pooling saltwater. “You—you really want to go out with me?”
The irritation melted off Jaime’s face, replaced with something akin to relief. He sighed through his nostrils, shaking his head in exasperation.
“Yes, Brienne. That’s why I, you know, asked you out.”
Brienne bit her lip, a smile floating to her face before she knew what was happening.
“Oh.”
It didn’t feel real.
“Yes, then.”
Jaime laughed at her.
“You suck at this,” he told her affectionately.
Brienne shrugged awkwardly.
“I’ll pick you up at 6,” he offered, walking backwards toward a side door with a bit of broken stick wedged in the hinge. Coach Selmy’s whistle pierced the walls, but Jaime’s eyes were trained on Brienne. “If you’re in a dress, I’m standing you up.”
Through her fluttering nerves and pounding heart, Brienne realized dimly that wearing a dress had never even crossed her mind.
“Did Jaime Lannister just ask you out?”
The words made it suddenly real, and the world flew into sharp clarity. Brienne spun, hands tightened into fists.
Loras stared back at her, pride and apprehension and disbelief in the curve of his mouth. His shoulders pushed forward, refusing to cower, but his feet were staggered as if he might step aside and let her bolt.
“Don’t tell Renly,” the words fell from her mouth, catching in the lines on Loras’s forehead. “Please,” she added, more desperately than she’d like.
He looked at her for a long moment, muscles shifting tensely.
“If you say so,” he muttered unhappily, and Brienne relaxed infinitesimally. Loras followed suit, his jaw twinging as though he wasn’t sure he should say what he’d already decided to say. “If he tries anything – “ he began.
Brienne glared at him, not willing to grant him his old role back.
“I’ll kick his can.”
“His ass, you mean?” Loras tried to keep a straight face, but her unwillingness to curse had always amused him to no end. “Do you even own a dress?”
“No,” she muttered, stepping on a decaying beetle and hearing it crunch under her heel. “I have an old skirt I wear to cotillion.”
What kind of girl didn’t own a dress?
The kind of girl Jaime Lannister asks out, some giddy inner part of her answered.
“Burn it,” Loras suggested, looking her up and down, then glancing toward the door where Jaime had disappeared. “Brienne, as your . . . teammate,” he paused uncharacteristically, blazed on, “and your friend, I have to tell you. You need help. Bad.”
Brienne looked down at herself and sighed.
She really, really did.