The Provenance || Jon Snow | Game of Thrones

3.06

Brienne is obviously uncomfortable under Jaime's persistent stare, not helped by the fact they're both rather weakened and naked in a bath he insists they take together.  But ever the strong woman, Brienne's doing her best to avoid looking anywhere inappropriate, but finding it all the more difficult by the situation and Jaime's entrancing green eyes.  And all the same, their conversation is possessing something of great unease, as Jaime recalls the past and she's forced to reconcile her present.  Why does Jaime Lannister trusts her?  Brienne's eyes hold something close to distrust for his proclamation, though the Lannister mistakes it for something else entirely.

    "There it is.  There's the look.  I've seen it for 17 years on face after face. You all despise me.  Kingslayer.  Oathbreaker.  A man without honor," Jaime Lannister, weakness revealed in his spite for the generation, growls like a true lion, Brienne watching him in silent confusion and wonder.  His green eyes, enraged, spit fire as he asks, "You've heard of wildfire?"

"Of course," she nods, and he grins with spite.

"The Mad King was obsessed with it.  He loved to watch people burn, the way their skin blackened and blistered and melted off their bones.  He burned lords he didn't like.  He burned Hands who disobeyed him.  He burned anyone who was against him.  Before long, half the country was against him." 

Ghosts seem to linger deep in the hidden eyes of Jaime Lannister, swirling like the bath he sits in, but entirely dark and depthless, like scars to prove his tale.  "Aerys saw traitors everywhere.  So he had his pyromancer place caches of wildfire all over the city--beneath the Sept of Baelor and the slums of Flea Bottom.  Under houses, stables, taverns.  Even beneath the Red Keep itself.  Finally, the day of reckoning came.

"Robert Baratheon marched on the capital after his victory at the Trident.  But my father arrived first with the whole Lannister army at his back, promising to defend the city against the rebels.  I knew my father better than that.  He's never been one to pick the losing side.  I told the Mad King as much.  I urged him to surrender peacefully.  But the king didn't listen to me.  He didn't listen to Varys who tried to warn him.

"But he did listen to Grand Maester Pycelle, that grey, sunken cunt.  'You can trust the Lannisters,' he said.  'The Lannisters have always been true friends of the crown.'  So we opened the gates and my father sacked the city. 

"Once again, I came to the king, begging him to surrender.  He told me to bring him my father's head.  Then he turned to his pyromancer.  'Burn them all,' he said. 'Burn them in their homes.  Burn them in their beds.  Burn them before they come searching.  Burn them before the screaming.'

"Tell me, if your precious Renly commanded you to kill your own father and stand by while thousands of men, women, and children burned alive, would you have done it?  Would you have kept your oath then?  First, I killed the pyromancer.  And then when the king turned to flee, I drove my sword into his back.  'Tell her to burn them all,' he kept saying. 'Burn them all.'  I don't think he expected to die.  He—he meant to burn with the rest of us and rise again, reborn as a dragon to turn his enemies to ash.  I slit his throat to make sure that didn't happen.  That's where Ned Stark found me."

Brienne eyes the man in front of her with an entirely new impression that truth often creates, her body frozen beneath the warm water, so entirely stunned by Jaime Lannister and the heartbreak, spite, and anger on his face.  Her heart erupts in pity for this poor man who only did what he did to save people, her voice a solemn cry of wonder as she asks, "If this is true why didn't you tell anyone?  Why didn't you tell Lord Stark?"

"Stark?" Jaime scoffs, eying her as if she's stupid to think the previous Lord of Winterfell was anything less than noble.  "You think the honorable Ned Stark wanted to hear my side?  He judged me guilty the moment he set eyes on me.  By what right does the wolf judge the lion?"