Only A Northern Song ~ Game of Thrones / Willas Tyrell ~

Chapter Seventy Four: The Last Supper

The tower rooms they had converted into a prison cell was certainly warmer than the ones down in the cellars, though they felt just as entraping and suffocating, and it took everything in Eddmina to not turn and flee the moment she was through the door.

Fleeing wouldn't have been particularly cowardly, since the man she had come to visit was sleeping, with his back to her and the door. He would have never even known that she had been, he wouldn't have the chance to think her weak for running before she gave him the chance to speak to her. Eddmina knew though, and so she shut the door behind herself with enough force that it slammed, and Ser Jaime Lannister let out a startled groan, jerking up from his position, looking around the room wildly for the danger until his eyes settled on her. She forced herself to remain stoic, even when she felt a stinging sensation run through her when she saw how his left arm was cradling the right protectively, hiding the bandaged stump, as if shielding it from view would make it not real.

He was cleaner than the last time she had seen him, and even with the injury he looked as if he was not as thin. His hair was still a state, not a golden mane anymore but a faded tangled mess, and he was in dire need of a shave. Still, his appearance was an improvement, which made looking him in the eye an easier task. He swallowed when he saw her, tightening his jaw as he sat up a little straighter. He did not smile, not even a cruel sarcastic grin like he usually offered her, and as if to compensate for it Eddmina offered him a quick small smile before becoming serious once more.

"You're alive then," Jaime remarked, moving out from under the covers of the small bed, sitting on the edge as he looked her up and down. "No one would tell me anything. How's the arm? Did they break your nose?"

"No terrible damage, save a scar on my arm, I'm lucky northern steel is so well forged, it'll heal into a subtle little thing," she dismissed his cold concern quickly, glancing at his bandaged stump and looking back to his face so fast in the hopes that he didn't notice. "It could have been worse."

"Is that what you've come for? To compare your flimsy scar to me and remind yourself how lucky you are?" Jaime snapped back. Eddmina's only reaction was to raise one of her eyebrows, as if asking for him to go on. "Nearly a month on and you finally decide to show your face. You leave me for a month with no company save your maester's blundering fool of an apprentice and that brute you call a woman-"

"If not for Lady Brienne, we would both be dead," Eddmina cut in sternly. "I'd hope you would remember that."

"I remember being told that had you not used your cloak to put pressure on my hand I might've bled out," Jaime retorted quickly. "Forget the wench, I'd be dead without you."

"Aye, and if not for you they would have gotten me in the side and not the arm," she remembered, her voice quiet as she recalled blurry memories. "We owe each other as much of a debt as we owe to Lady Brienne."

"Isn't that what knights are meant to do, save poor defenceless damsels?" Jaime asked sarcastically, and Eddmina was almost relieved, glad to see the defiant spark back in him, even if he did sound more bitter than he used to. "That was the sort of knight that I wanted to be, not the one who kills those he was sworn to protect."

"Or pushes little children out of towers," Eddmina couldn't help but add.

Sometimes she felt as though she had to remind herself that they were all at war because the man in front of her. The blind hatred she had initially felt towards him after finding out what he had done to her little brother had somehow dulled. She wasn't sure if it was since Bran was dead, killed by another man, or if it was because she had realised that life was not as black and white as someone being purely evil. Either way, things were not so easy anymore, and hating Jaime was something she had to tell herself to do, especially when she saw the faint flicker of regret in his eyes.