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Four Peaks and a Valley
He should have been standing guard, alert in this valley for whatever threats might emerge from the tree line with dead, icy eyes that scan the white landscape for those that live or the sky for leathery wings that blot out the moon, but his mind drifted back relentlessly to how he had given in to his own rage, how he’d taken whatever was left of Sansa’s innocence and smashed it with one hard, golden hand. How he’d fucked her against the frozen ground until they were both crying.
…
It couldn’t have been the moment Sansa had dreamt about. No songs would be sung about the fair maiden roughly fucked by the Kingslayer.
When they encountered a man in rags fleeing from a burning village, Jaime stopped him to demand information about the invasion, about anything that the man might know about Daenerys and her dragons, so they might attempt to avoid her army. He never expected him to have news of King’s Landing. Never expected to hear that while dragons had not yet reached its gates, the king as well as the queen mother were dead at the hands of the smallfolk, deserted by the Kingsguard, the Gold Cloaks, deserted by all. Torn limb from limb by the mob, the man panted.
As they rode away from the village on the horse they shared, Jaime stared blankly ahead, barely even feeling the press of Sansa’s body against him, when it had been all he could focus on since the moon first hung full in the sky.
He stared blankly at her over their burning fire as well, watching her measured movements and how her eyes sometimes met his. Her eyes were blue, not green, and they looked back at him with a bewildering mix of fear, compassion, and sadness. He couldn’t understand her. Not the way he’d always thought he understood Cersei.
But she just kept lifting her eyes to him, those blue eyes brimming with untold depth in such a young face.
What if he could understand her too? What if he only needed to be inside her to see through the haze, to consume her to feel more than half a man again?
He went to his feet, and her gaze followed his movement, her brows arching in silent question as he sidestepped the fire. Perhaps his heart beating up in his throat fast enough to make him pant was a sign of madness. It must have been madness that made him grasp her arm, the bare part where her too short sleeves did not quite meet her grey leather gloves, and pull her up until she was flush against his chest. Madness that brought his lips crashing down upon hers.
His golden hand clutched her waist, his good hand fisted in her fiery hair, holding her fast, but a voice, a sultry, purring voice at the back of his head, reminded him that even while she opened her mouth to him, this girl was not Cersei, would never be Cersei. He growled against her lips, trying to drown the voice out, to silence it forever. The girl went stiff in his arms, frightened no doubt by the noise he had made, but her fear made no difference to him, as he dragged her down onto the furs spread beneath the crooked lean to.
“I’m a lion,” he reminded her, as he lay atop her.
He should have known it wouldn’t end well. Lions can suffer naught but another lion. Anything else is prey.
He fleetingly glanced once more into her blue eyes. If he was expecting rapture, he was disappointed. She looked worried—her eyes clouded and brows knit together, her pink, slightly chapped lips turning down at the corners.
It wasn’t the face of a beautiful girl about to give in to her barely concealed desires. It was the face of someone who was cheerless. Who was alone in the world, and yet, looked upon him as an even sadder creature. It was enough to push him over the edge. He was sick of being miserable. Sick of feeling helpless and cast off. Of grasping at honor, as if it was something he could ever attain. Sick of feeling like a dead man on the march.
There were only two things in life that ever made him feel alive—fighting and fucking—and he’d lost his sword hand.
Balancing on his right forearm, he fumbled with her skirts, the multitude of thick woolen layers bunching in his hand as he drew them up around her waist. She lay motionless beneath him as he put his hand in the waist of her smallclothes and awkwardly jerked them down to her knees, exposing her cunt to him and the cold of the winter air. He should have taken a moment to enjoy the view, but his heart was choking him, beating mercilessly in his throat rather than in his chest where it belonged, the voice shouting in his head.
He laughed a barked sound that brought a wide-eyed response from the girl who wasn’t Cersei pinned beneath him. He’d only just realized that in this position, he’d find it rather difficult to remove his bloody breeches. Never terribly adept at working the laces with his left hand, he was even less capable in his current position. Maybe he needed his right hand to really fuck properly as well.
A shaking, pale hand reached out to brush the front of him, straining to reach his laces. Failing in her initial attempt, Sansa pulled her gloves off with her teeth, letting them fall alongside her face, and then worked quickly, all signs of maidenly nervousness gone or well disguised beneath her ivory mask as she unlaced him and worked his breeches down over his hips.
Watching her blank face and feeling her passionless hands against the flat of his stomach and his bare hips shouldn’t have been arousing. But, grief and pity apparently did nothing to dampen his arousal. His hard, red cock once uncovered felt like as much an incrimination as his nickname ever did. He was a monster.
‘Shut up,’ he shouted inwardly at the voice that still needled him, taunted him that he’d fail in bedding her, that he was impotent for all but his twin. He feared for an agonizing second that he’d shouted it aloud. His growl had made her nervous enough; he didn’t need to start shouting like the madman he was beginning to believe himself to be.
She was a maid and from his perfunctory exploration with his fingers, not ready for him. But he needed her. Or he needed an approximation of what he’d had before. Or he needed proof that what he’d lost wouldn’t leave him shorn of purpose. He had some notion of how to draw out her desire, to coax her into readiness, but that would take time he simply didn’t have.
He grasped himself and parted her legs. He felt as if he was on the edge of tumbling into the churning seas below Casterly Rock as he entered her. Numbness. Blackness. A void. He was moments from drowning, and it was all he could do to choke back tears, gasping in her ear with each stroke.
Several quick, uneven thrusts and he reached an anticlimactic completion that was hardly satisfying and as quick as any green boy. Finished, he buried his face in her neck, surrounded by waves of thick auburn curls and tangles, for ten times as long as he’d buried himself inside of her. He felt as if he had taken milk of the poppy. A lifetime of belonging only to his twin, and now dry grief sex with a girl whose tears he could feel wetting his neck and chest.
He didn’t know what to say other than a muffled, “You must be tired.”
It wasn’t an apology and even an apology would certainly not have been enough. A new worry was replacing the chanting voice in his mind. A worry that was forming like a thundercloud in his head. He’d hurt Cersei the first time, had he not, when he hadn't known better? It had been so many name days ago, but he could remember her scowl, remember how she hit him with a closed fist, though it had been her idea to try it. Perhaps he had hurt the Stark girl in his rush at completion, when she had already been hurt by so very many.
He’d promised to never hurt her.
He was about to roll off of her and disappear from the lean to, stomp off in the snow to scream at the sky and clear his head of the smell of his seed, when her hands snaked up his back, coming to rest on his shoulder blades. Her nose nudged his ear and her lips brushed his neck, his still thrumming pulse, as she began to hum. Not a tuneless hum of satisfaction. No, she hummed a song. A hymn, he realized, as he swallowed thickly.
What was wrong with this girl? What was wrong with him that he could take advantage of a girl this broken?
It would have been easier if she slapped him. Cersei would have smacked him if he was so thoughtless with her. She would have thought nothing of splitting his lip, of scratching deep furrows in his flesh until she drew blood in repayment. But instead, Sansa stroked his back and cooed in his ear.
He finally rolled off of her, disentangling himself from her slender arms and flopping onto his back to stare up at a starless sky. He didn’t pray, but as he tucked himself one-handed back into his breeches, he made a silent plea that she would pull her skirts down, for if there was blood on her thighs mixed with his seed and he saw it, he might very well vomit bile. It wouldn’t be the first time she'd unknowingly drawn such a reaction from him.
…
Was it wrong, he wondered? Would it always be wrong as long as it wasn’t Cersei?
He leaned his forehead against his forearm, propping himself against the rough bark of the pine tree. It seemed as if his stomach, which had just emptied its contents on the frost covered ground, was telling him that even fantasizing about a woman other than Cersei was wholly unnatural.
He opened his eyes and stared down at his flaccid cock, hanging out of his unlaced breeches. He had ridden all day with Sansa Stark rubbing against him until he was achingly hard. He’d waited until it was dark enough to stalk away from the camp and take himself in hand, to think of how he’d like to bend her over and press red finger marks into the slim curve of her hips. But as soon as he had called the images to mind, his stomach had turned.
He could smell his own sick in the cold night air. Hardly inspiring, and yet, to admit defeat was to admit that Cersei owned him. She could fuck anyone—Lancel, Osmund Kettleblack, and Moonboy—but he couldn't even imagine another woman. Even a girl as beautiful as Sansa Stark.
And she was beautiful. She looked nothing like him, but he could not deny her beauty. Or her bravery. Petyr died at her hands; he knew it though she had not admitted as much to him. He had no doubt she would do the same to him, should he prove to be less than trustworthy. He admired her for it. Admired the steel behind the innocence of her limpid blue eyes, and he was equally intrigued by her modesty, the way she shielded her body from him, instead of using it as a weapon as she might. It made him intensely curious about her.
He gritted his teeth and flexed his left hand before tentatively stroking himself once, twice, though it sent a shiver up his spine that was not entirely pleasant, when he pictured Sansa’s creamy white breast, how her nipples must be rosy pink beneath her bodice, how she might suck his fingers as he licked into her fiery curls. The thought didn’t make him as hard as he would have liked, so he closed his eyes and pulled harder with the impatience of Cersei’s touch.
…
Her touch was all wrong, and yet, that shouldn’t matter. He was a man who hadn’t known a woman in countless moons, who had only the company of his poor left hand to warm him, and she was beautiful and he had fantasized about her, abused himself just yards away from their camp while he thought of doing filthy things to her. So, he should not have minded that her touch was gentle and uncertain. That should have had its own kind of charm.
“I’m sorry,” she said, when he brushed away her hand with a grunt.
Her whispered words, warm against his neck, only made it worse. Cersei would never apologize. It would be his fault for going soft, his failure, not hers.
He was good at fucking, gods be damned. Why the bloody hell did his body fail him when he wanted to avail himself of pretty Sansa Stark’s image or her tapered fingers rubbing against the front of his breeches?
“I just thought…you seemed restless.”
He had been thrashing, trying to forget his hard cock and the rounded softness of the girl curled against him for warmth. Sleep had evaded him, but he’d probably been keeping her awake as well.
“And you thought you’d service me, my lady?”
Even in the dark of the moonless night he could see her cheeks blush hot. He experienced a moment of regret for what rock he may have overturned with his cutting comment. He couldn’t be sure what role Alayne truly played for Petyr Baelish. Although her maidenhead had been preserved to maintain her usefulness, she may have been taught to please in other ways, just like Littlefinger’s whores. That wasn’t her fault.
“Why not? I am your sister too,” she said with practiced calm.
He smirked, more a snarl than a smile. So, she bit, when baited. She was a wolf, and that was enough to make his cock twitch. He was familiar with females with jaws that snap. Familiar with one at least.
“And I’ve seen the way you look at me. I might be able to help you.”
The thought of losing his erection in her hand, however, was enough to keep him from grabbing her wrist and showing her how he liked to be touched, but that didn’t mean they need go back to pretending to be asleep.
“I’m here to serve you. Is that not how the songs go? With you the fair maiden in need of rescue and I the shiny knight?”
“I don’t believe in knights, ser.”
“Is that right?” He brought his hand up to tuck a strand of hair, come loose from her braid, behind her ear. “Then it won’t shock you if I tell you to pull your skirts up, so I might help you with matters they don't teach young girls about in the songs.”
She said nothing, though she lowered her eyes and bit her lip hard enough to make it go white. It was almost coy. It might be a subtle seduction or it might be unpracticed innocence. It was almost impossible to tell. The mystery stirred him further.
“There may be no knights, but it would be rather discourteous of me to accept a lady’s help, when she herself is in need.”
In the quiet of the winter night, she raised her skirts, he found the slick of her cunt, and after countless minutes of unexpectedly inept fumbling, she peaked against his hand. Despite showing signs of having a promising career as an actress, he didn’t think this untouched maid knew enough about her body to fake her release. Besides, his efforts were middling at best, her release hardly the overwhelming screams of a whore.
He only knew Cersei, had only touched and been inside of Cersei. Only knew her body as he knew his own. He had no practice in trying, and when faced with an unfamiliar body, he had tried much too hard. He had either been too rough or too gentle, said too much or too little, or perhaps he was just much too old or reminded her too much of those who shared his face, and he couldn’t bring himself to wake her so that he might ask.
She might have slept soundly against his chest, her head rising and falling with every breath he took, but he felt sure that Sansa Stark would certainly never come to him seeking further lessons in the flesh.
Her skin felt like rose petals.
…
Jaime was roused from his sleep by the feeling of an arm snaking across his chest. He jerked, causing the pallet to shake. Blinking, he looked down at the outline of Sansa propping herself up alongside of him.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, settling back down on his bare chest.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t sleep,” she explained, hovering at his side, not withdrawing or moving closer.
“I gave you the bed, you ungrateful brat,” he said, softening his words by drawing her in closer to his chest.
They had only reached their destination some hours earlier, far enough east that he thought they might be safe from the glare of the Dragon Queen, far enough that the winter winds did not make snow blow through the streets. He had rented a one bedroom house and given her the bed, sleeping in the room attached to hers on a pallet only a few inches off the dusty floor.
He’d slept, but it had been strange not having her close after so long on their journey together.
She was suddenly all too close, however, as she slipped one leg over his. Her skin. He could feel the skin of her thigh against his. Warm and soft. In the warmth of this land, he had stripped free of all his clothes and slipped beneath the linens in nothing but his smallclothes. What in the seven hells was she wearing? He squinted over her mess of red hair to see his much too big tunic hanging off her shoulder, peeking out from underneath the linens draped over them both.
He breathed purposefully through his nose. “Go back to your bed, Sansa.”
“I can’t sleep in there. I don’t feel safe,” she whispered, her breath stirring the hair on his chest. “Anyone might come through the open window.”
“No one knows us here and it’s hot.”
He could smell himself on her, the sweat of his body clinging to the tunic she'd donned.
“Sansa,” he said more insistently, abruptly taking a hold of her wrist and lifting it off his chest. “I can’t sleep like this.”
“Oh.” Her brows knit together in sleepy confusion.
They’d slept like this for several moons, but they’d had more clothes on, gods be damned, and he’d sworn to himself that he would leave her alone from this point forward. He would protect her, fulfill his vow to Catelyn Stark as best he knew how, and that would be an end to it.
The crestfallen look that settled over her fair face, however, was too much.
“Just roll over,” he commanded gruffly, hoping she would take the hint and move away from him.
“Thank you,” she murmured, sitting partially upright on the cramped pallet.
“Bloody hells,” Jaime cursed as she brushed him accidently, accidentally exposing the source of his mortification. When he wanted to perform, his cock failed him, but now it acted completely against his will.
She paused mid-turn. Jaime stared up at the stuccoed ceiling, wanting the straw mattress tick to suck him in and bury him like the thick mud of a bog. Instead, she settled back at his side with a small sigh.
“I know it’s not me. I know about men and…”
“Do you?” he cut her off. “You know about men,” he laughed.
After a few interminable minutes of silence had passed, he turned his head to look at her, exhaling a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Her head rested on the pillow with her hands tucked underneath, and her eyes met his unwaveringly without a hint of fear. His gaze lowered to her lips, which were parted just slightly. He swallowed the feeling that crawled up from his belly, his Adam’s apple bobbing inadvertently.
“I know as much as you know about women,” she finally whispered.
She was a brave little thing. He had to give her that. Brave and smart and beautiful. She didn’t know him like she knew herself, but she often saw right through him.
“I want you. Or I want to want you,” he stumbled, immediately hating how uncertain he sounded, how weighted by cares.
The corners of her mouth curled upwards in a slight smile. “Such pretty words,” she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. Her face softened once more, however, when she asked, “And why is that, ser?”
To excise a ghost? To see if he could?
Because he thought he might do more than rescue her if he let himself.
“Because if you keep slipping into my bed and keeping me awake at night, I might as well enjoy your visitations,” he teased in a low voice, as he shifted, turning to face her, settling his golden hand on her hip.
He closed the space between them to kiss her lips briefly. He pulled back before her lips could even part against his, but the contact had been enough to set his pulse racing. Without a lantern lit to see if the black pools of her eyes were wide with arousal or if a flush spread along her breasts, he was unsure whether she came to him so that she might sleep or whether she wanted more from him as well. Her mask prevented him from understanding her. He had a hardened cock, but women were more subtle.
As he contemplated a way he might ask her whether she wanted him to fuck her that wouldn’t immediately send her running from the room, she ran her short nails down his chest. It wasn’t an affirmation of arousal, but it was more than enough.
He bent down, kissing her again and lingering over her plump lower lip until she made a little noise in the back of her throat. She tasted of mint. He’d been inside of her and before that he had frigged her, but he had spent very little time kissing her, so he was unsure whether she always tasted like this or whether she had eaten something to give her that faint icy taste.
He broke their kiss to run his hand down her face and down her neck. He wanted to touch every inch of her, but his now seemingly tent-like tunic was swallowing up the softest parts of her.
“You’re a damnable thief,” he said, tugging at the hem of the shirt
“I don’t have anything cool to wear as of yet.”
“That’s unfortunate for you, but I’m going to have to reclaim my stolen goods.”
The tunic went up and over her head, but instead of drawing on his now little used and poorly proven skills, Jaime felt himself beginning to soften as she lay before him naked with her pale skin, blue eyes, and red hair spilling over her shoulders—all wrong. He sat back on his heels, taking the linens with him and pressing the heels of his good and golden hand into his eyes until he saw stars on a black field.
“Jaime?” her voice called him back. He dropped his hands from his face. “I’m not a maid anymore. That needn’t give you pause.”
He almost laughed again. She thought he was suffering from an attack of conscience? But then, the memory of the way he’d treated her, how she had lost her maidenhead to him on the frozen ground in the wilderness washed over him, twisting his gut, and the source of his uncertainty swung with striking violence. He wasn’t even sure who the girl was that had allowed him to fuck her in a flurry of grief two moons ago. Let alone the girl that offered to put him to sleep by stroking his cock before that. She was not his other half, but she did not deserve to be used. To be used roughly.
“I’m sorry about last time,” he said flatly.
They’d never spoken of that night. They’d woken up the following day and continued moving on as they had done every morning prior. She’d made no complaint about the rub of the saddle, though she had to be sore, and her silence on the matter had been a relief. But seeing her here framed in the filtered moonlight brought the images and the gnawing guilt of that night flooding back. He hadn’t imagined that the hazy night of rage filled sex was a sign of things to come between himself and the Stark girl. As poorly as it had gone, he certainly hoped it wouldn’t be. He owed her this apology; he couldn’t go any further without offering up his confession to the alabaster goddess before him.
“That was…unchivalrous of me.”
She reached out her hand to him and he took it, intertwining his fingers in hers. He looked down at it: white and unmarked in his calloused, tanned hand.
“You were hurting, ser. You were in pain.”
His brows drew together, watching her as she smoothed her thumb over the back of his hand.
“I hurt you, Sansa.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said, tugging on his hand. “You promised not to hurt me.”
He settled over her, for that seemed to be what she wanted, propping himself above her on his forearms. As he stared down into her eyes, however, he couldn’t help but wonder once more what was wrong with her. He knew he'd hurt her. Did she not remember or did she purposefully remake her memories into what she wanted them to be? Did her expert pretending make a believer even of herself?
There might be something deeply wrong with her, but when he felt a toe trace the side of his calf, his cock didn’t seem to care about her sanity. Maybe there was something deeply wrong with him as well.
“You don’t want me, but Petyr said I was beautiful,” she said, arching one thin brow and pursing her lips. “That I was irresistible.”
He ran his thumb along her jaw line until he reached her lower lip and dipped the pad of his thumb into her mouth, tugging her lip down. Her tongue darted out, as he'd once imagined it might.
“You are.”
She was. Too much so. She’d crawled onto his pallet looking for comfort and he ended up lounging atop her. Or perhaps she’d wanted more all along. He didn’t know, but he knew he didn’t want it to be like the last time, where she’d given him gentle compassion and he’d taken advantage of her kindess.
They both had a chance to decide who’d they be in this new world, and he didn’t want to be that man.
“I didn’t show you how it could be.” He kissed the side of her mouth. “It can be better than that.”
“It was…it can be better?”
It was clear she didn’t believe him. Either she had expected it to be awful or she was mad enough to remember it having been much better than it had been. He was not particularly delighted with either possibility.
“It makes you feel alive. I can make it much better for you, I can make you feel something. I want to.” As he said it, he felt how much that was true, and not just because he owed her as much. He pressed a kiss behind the delicate seashell of her ear, and she arched beneath him. “Let me show you, Sansa.”
She nodded but then stilled for a moment. “Do you want to pretend?” she asked, running her hands down the plane of his back and raising the hairs along his arms. “I don’t mind pretending. I'm very good at it.”
With his mouth poised near her ear, he whispered, “Pretend what?”
“That I’m her.”
He felt her hand slip between their bodies and cup him through his smallclothes. Her touch was different, not wrong. Just different.
“No pretending,” he said running his hand down her neck, down her breast—smaller, firmer, paler—cupping her and rubbing his thumb over her small, rosy nipple.
“Sansa Stark and Jaime Lannister? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he murmured against her neck, sucking hard enough that it would leave a mark.
Her fingers tangled in his hair. “If we’re ourselves, we’re alone in the world. Alone together.”
It was true, and the truth of her words made his stomach seize: he was either going to void his stomach again or ravage her. In an unmanly struggle he rid himself of his smallclothes and settled himself between her legs.
Taking in the smooth stretch of skin before him that wasn’t Cersei’s, his assertion—no pretending—began to feel a weighty one. If he went soft now, he’d only confirm to this young girl that the Kingslayer was at best impotent and at worst someone who could only successfully fuck when he was angry and being cruel.
Her fingers settled in the thick of his hair at the nape of his neck. Scratching lightly, it reminded him of the way his mother used to run her fingers through his hair. It was unexpectedly comforting, and his mind blessedly slowed.
This lovely girl was spread out for his consumption, he reflected, and he was seized by a moment of romanticism. She could be a fair maiden in a song in another world. If there were such a world where maids and heroes existed, she could be the queen. Why make comparisons, when he could be here and relish the feel of his body against her young, firm one?
“Jaime,” she spoke into his clavicle, her voice wavering.
He could feel her breath coming in quick succession under the initial ministrations he directed to the softness of her inner thigh. Her hands dipped down towards his pelvis, but he stopped her short.
“Don’t do that,” he urged before biting her shoulder, making her gasp and wiggle beneath him. “Just let me, let me, Sansa.”
He needed to make sure she was ready. What he could do to make that so, however, he wasn't entirely sure anymore. His brain was slowing to a crawl.
“Please,” she said, reaching out for him once more and grasping his cock. “Please, Jaime,” she repeated, sounding impatient and desperate.
Her hand was warm and she gripped him tightly, so that he thought fleetingly that this might be over before it ever began, potentially making an oath breaker out of him yet again. Something about her made him feel as if he could only count eleven name days again.
“Sansa,” he chuckled, attempting not to sound as on edge as he felt, “let go, my love.”
“Love?” she asked, her voice breaking.
“Shh…” he indulgently quieted her.
She twittered like a little bird. Perhaps it was nerves or perhaps she found his endearment ridiculous, but she shook slightly beneath him in a pleasant jiggle of flesh. At least she’d stopped speaking. So dutiful. So gentle. And she was sweet with a smile on her lips. Sweet in the way he imagined women were supposed to be. But sharpened from the cruel rub of the world, making her in some ways suited for him in the way only a world weary Sansa could be.
He bit his bottom lip as his tip brushed her entrance. She was wet. Maybe she was already ready. Maybe she was right.
He didn’t love her, but maybe he could pretend. Maybe if he pretended it would become real eventually, maybe then he wouldn’t feel completely lost and he could save her in a way he hadn't expected. It seemed to work for Sansa after all.
He pushed into her, slowly.
“Oh gods,” she mumbled against his skin, as he reached the limit of his length.
She was tighter than he remembered and slick like the inside of his cheek. He balled the pillow in his grasp, trying to avoid falling over the edge just yet. He hadn’t felt anything the last time. Now he felt everything in an overwhelming torrent of physical sensation and unexplainable emotion.
“Sansa,” he rasped, trying the words out on his tongue, “I love you.”
“I know.”
She lied. She pretended as much as he did, but it was already an improvement over the nothingness. He could become accustomed to pretending.