A Vow Without Honor

The Crossing - Part II

Jaime

He didn't sleep that night.

Even if he had wanted to, the shouts and cries from Myra interrupted every brief moment of silence, her cold, gray eyes – once so warm – stared at him from every corner of the room, and that dagger had returned again, stabbing him anew every time he adjusted to the pain. Once before, he had felt this way, and it had taken him years to get over it, or at least used to it.

Jaime didn't have years now.

So, he sat, and waited, watching the candle slowly burn through its wax and wick. At some point, he'd gotten it in his head that writing a letter might be a good idea. Jaime could not even remember who it had been for or why, but it hadn't mattered. About two words in, he abandoned the effort, realizing how futile anything was with his left hand. He could hardly eat properly, forming sentences may as well have been an impossibility.

When the first rays of light made their way though his window, Jaime left his room and found some meek servant who squeaked every time he so much as looked at them. It seemed that whatever backbone the Twins had once possessed – not that it ever had much – had vanished the instant Walder Frey died.

They escorted him to the Great Hall, the once empty space having been filled with tables and benches. His men stood and gave their proper courtesies before they resumed eating, talking and laughing as if nothing was amiss.

It seemed the Freys had covered their troublesome bloodstains with rugs.

Jaime was seated by himself at a table at the front of the room, not the high one where the lord sat, but it seemed no one was taking that spot. He noticed the servants eying it strangely when they brought his food, and thought he spied more blood on the chairs. He wondered if that had anything to do with Lothar's mumblings.

There he sat, picking at burnt bacon and fish, not hungry, but not unaware that he should eat something. He watched his men, he watched the servants, and the few Freys that joined them, and he waited. For what, he couldn't say. Myra was not about to enter this space again, and he certainly wasn't about to force her to. And Brienne...

A chair scraped as the subject of his thoughts sat beside him.

"Thought I told you to sleep," the woman mumbled, accepting a cup from one of the servants. She eyed it a moment before taking a sip.

"And I thought you'd be watching over her," Jaime hissed back, watching everyone more closely, wary.

"She'll be fine. The Freys aren't about to bother her. I think she frightens them," she replied.

"Did you speak to her?"

"I did."

There were a lot of unsaid words left to hang in the air around them, and unasked questions that he did not want answered.

"Jaime," Brienne started after a pause. It should have been strange hearing her use his name so casually. "She's not going to leave while her men are prisoners here, you know that. Not willingly, at least."

"I know."

He was fairly certain she wouldn't willingly go anywhere with him now.

"So what do you plan to do about that?"

Jaime sighed. That was the problem, wasn't it? What was he going to do? This wasn't a battlefield. He couldn't cut down men until a solution presented itself, not that he was capable of doing so anymore. But he wasn't his father, or even Tyrion. He didn't know how to make deals, not without threatening to get his father involved like a child, but Jaime knew the fear of Tywin Lannister would only go so far, especially since he'd allowed the Freys to do what they had, and was only tolerating his presence at the Twins for the sake of one woman, not the entire Northern army.