Chapter Text
Over a lifetime there will always be days to be forgotten, those that stab at hearts and minds until the pain becomes too much to bear. There will be those that feel like the dawn will never come and the night stretches on and on into oblivion, ‘worst case scenarios’ the only option left to hang onto before the growing disquiet demands to be acknowledged. And isolated in a screamingly sterile hospital waiting room, waiting for his brother to dare anyone to stop him from running red lights, innocent blood drying on his hands, Jaime Lannister prayed to gods he had stopped believing in to give him just one day. Just one day he could wash away. He had stood by and watched his mother slowly waste away to nothing, his forbidden lover marry three times over, each wedding drawing him closer with the heady combination of contradictory words and actions. But the day his six year old 'nephew' followed a scrap of a kitten into oncoming traffic was something Jaime couldn't handle being haunted by for the rest of his life.
Sirens he was usually in control of, the time he'd been temporarily suspended from the police force pending further investigation never fully forgotten, still rang in his ears, his thoughts no longer his own but belonging to the dual natures of grief and guilt. The Lannister name would be back in the news cycle come tomorrow morning, his cousin being forced to learn how her youngest, their youngest, if Jaime could believe in any of her lies anymore, found himself fighting for breath, hidden from the media, while Cersei cowered out of reach, of readily courted paparazzi and family alike, on one of the best beaches in Dorne.
He had never been allowed close enough to really care before, existing on the periphery of their lives, letting himself buy into Cersei's paranoia about people asking too many questions about the children, that now, when they needed him, Jaime was at a loss of what was expected. He wouldn't be the one they wanted when their world became blood and gold, crash and break, despite the months spent under each other's feet to grow used to Myrcella's questionable musical taste and Tommen's kittens. He felt no further forward than he had twenty years earlier, when Cersei had announced her first pregnancy like it was something they had discussed and agreed upon.
Suddenly, a chorus of professionally concerned voices pierced through the descending veil of shock bleakly blanketing the waiting room in half spoken promises and prayers, drawing Jaime's eyes to a flurry of activity that burst through the ambulance bay doors. He knew that, no matter what kind of tragedy had touched another family, every second would count for this new one, another soul to add to the collection of the hospital wings. From his restricted vantage point hunkered at the back of the room, he noticed that the girl they were rushing through on a stretcher looked to be no older than Tommen, her tiny body equally dwarfed by the equipment laden gurney and the silently shaking blonde refusing to let go of a pale hand as fiercely freckled as her own sorrow stricken face.
Assuming that the scene playing out in front of him was an everyday occurrence for the heavily bloodied stage, Jaime wouldn't have given them a second thought, had he not caught the end of a turquoise tinged, teary glance the blonde cast out into the tension, looking for reasons he too had mislaid somewhere along the way. It might have taken no longer than a few seconds for him to realise that worry had, however temporarily, aged her well beyond her years but his first impression seemed to be stuck on how, even on a good day, describing her as 'plain' would have been hiding a relative kindness she didn't deserve.
But, in spite of the world crumbling around him, there was something about her lack of beauty and grace that ignited a spark of recognition inside of Jaime, the surfacing memory of the first day he had seen her, his need for anything familiar causing him to shift forward in his seat.
Her eyes narrowed as he continued to find an inexplicable interest in the untold stories swimming in their astonishing depths, attempting to smother whatever spark was holding them both steady with an uncomfortably knowing smile. And as her regard raked over his clasped hands, bound together in bloody infamy, she froze in recognition and Jaime found that her step back into the horrors of reality, the ones blasted on newspapers and splattered on parking lot pavements, was enough to allow his self-protective facade to begin to drop.
"Uncle Jaime!"
Myrcella's choked cry of acknowledgment sliced through the air, causing more than a few troubled heads to turn to take in the over photographed teenager, who was standing alongside one of the only people Jaime could irrefutably rely on to say the right thing when faced with a crisis. Almost as if addressing another conference room bursting at the seams with salivating journalists or hypercritical potential investors, his brother raised a hand in appeasement, failing to mask the flickering distress straining at his stonily set features. Tyrion quickly read the present situation, and all its possible outcomes, before Jaime could even scramble to his feet.
"Where in the seven hells have you been?" he hissed, opening his arms for Myrcella to step into, offering what little comfort he could dredge up. Looking down as she sniffled and shuffled closer, a little embarrassed but more grateful for the support, Jaime noticed the half full bottle of juice peeking out of her jacket pocket, a crumpled up doughnut wrapper keeping it company. “When I say things like ‘urgent’ and ‘emergency’,” he snapped, lowering his voice so the rest of the anxious waiting room couldn’t overhear. “That doesn’t generally mean that you have time to stop for snacks.”
Cella had barely laid her head on his shoulder before she lifted it, the empathy washing over her features preventing him, yet again, from seeing catching a glimpse of someone who wasn't there. Cersei would never cry in public. The more people you love, Jaime could hear her voice echoing in his head, dismissing him with a piercing look, so unlike the girl he had fallen for.
He'd started to come to terms with the fact that not too long ago he would have done anything to stop her from leaving, instead asking her to run away with him to any place where they wouldn't be a name first and people later. But the words had been repeated and rejected so many times over the years that they had long lost their true meaning. Jaime knew he would always feel something for Cersei, although, as he had finally managed to pull away only to watch her bury herself deeper in work and wine and wrath, he had begun to realise that her love for him had always taken a back seat to a self-propelled need for power.
"It's my fault, Uncle Jaime," Cella told him a little unsteadily, her eyes swimming with tears yet to be shed. "I just wanted to do something to help and giving blood was the first thing that came to mind. We-we may have lied about my age but I swear that was it."
"If this ever gets back to her mother, you know she’s going to smell your influence all over it.” Jaime turned to Tyrion, who was staring brazenly at the doors where the blue-eyed girl had been lingering by earlier, the trademark Lannister smirk turning hard and unforgiving. “She will find a way to make you pay if you've managed to get her only daughter in trouble."
"I think 'trouble' is a relative concept in this case," his brother replied absently, still firmly fixated on watching the shaded figures drop in and out of focus from behind the patterned glass of the waiting room, an army of briskly professional doctors moving between lifesaving procedures. "Especially since we all have such rare blood types.”
Jaime cursed inwardly at the barely veiled insinuation, remembering being bled like a stuck pig each time Cersei had gone into labour because the hospital had been criminally under stocked. Though at the same time, he realised he'd been an idiot for not asking about donating until now. It might not help him shake any of the guilt that was building over not keeping a closer eye on Tommen, but sitting still for the best part of an hour, with only his spiralling thoughts for company, hadn’t done anything either.
“Where…?” he started to ask, keeping a reassuring arm around Myrcella as Tyrion broke eye contact with the secured doors just long enough to cock his head towards the flyer laden far wall.
Blood Bank, Jaime read. Blue Wing. Basement. Room 7.
*******
Stranded in the disconcertingly deserted first floor staff room with little more than the now familiar sounds of the hospital shifting from day to night to keep her grounded, Brienne Tarth had never felt more alone in her entire life. With her mind currently running a gauntlet of never-ending scenarios, she instinctively repositioned herself in the uncomfortable recliner, bringing her knees up to rest against her chest, subconsciously hoping that the childish reaction would offer her more protection than it ever had in the past.
One of the more sympathetic nurses had passed Brienne a mug of steaming tea before she had been called in to assist with the incoming trauma, Alysanne, offering the same kind of non-committal platitudes they had all been taught, at one time or another, to use when trying to calm fearfully frantic families. Most families, though, weren’t associated with world renowned paediatric surgeons, like Brienne was. And right now, after having left a volley of voicemails ever since her youngest sister had been thrown from her horse, she could have used her father to help steer her mind back onto the path she was more comfortable with.
Inhaling deeply, as if that alone could stop her trembling fingers from reaching out for memorised words and phrases like ‘traumatic brain injury’, ‘subarachnoid haemorrhage’ or, Alysanne, ‘brain death’, Brienne found herself deeply resenting whatever hospital policy had instructed her colleagues to ask her to sit and stay in the purposeless place like an unwanted, disobedient pet. She wouldn’t be the first member of staff who had born witness to a loved one being wheeled through the overtaxed emergency room doors. But where they had been given the benefit of the doubt, allowed to continue triaging and treating the patients flitting in and out of the hospital on that unseasonably warm April night, less than six months later, Brienne hadn’t even been given the opportunity to defend her ability to hold on to a certain level of professional detachment in the face of indescribable tragedy.
Back in med school, which felt like a lifetime ago now that she had become fully immersed in the daily grind of trauma residency, Brienne had been reminded over and over again that her heart was too soft to watch people be welcomed into the arms of the Stranger. If she would just pick another speciality, she was told, then it would save her the pain that came with feeling helpless. Something that would be more suited to her gender than her unfeminine build, Dr Tarly had informed her. Something where her famous name could be allowed to fade into a novelty, rather than questioned at every turn. Something which would give her a chance to hide from the rest of the world. Although, no matter which path Brienne had ultimately chosen, she knew it wouldn’t have prevented her brother from taking an accountancy job in Braavos, which had resulted in his death. It couldn’t have stopped Alysanne from falling, or, two weeks after Brienne had graduated, a tiny, nameless teenage girl from dying in the ambulance bay before anyone could replenish the blood that had ran from her veins like an unseen current calling a steadily flowing river back to the ocean.
Even as she became caught up in reliving her past mistakes, the flickers of adrenalin were still coursing through her tensed muscles, making Brienne nervously twitch in her seat. The urge to run until she couldn’t think, to find comfort in the routine of solving other people’s problems, to be able to focus on something else and forget, for just a moment, at war with the voice of reassuring reason. But, still, finding herself looking in from the other side, as if this whole night had been nothing more than a vivid out-of-body experience, Brienne was having difficulty placing trust in the hands of her judgemental colleagues with their regimented rainbow colours and malicious misogynistic mischief. Her fingers itched to take back control, gripping the logoed mug tight enough for the china to send up a grating whine under the pressure, the whisper of sound thundering around the cavernous space and setting her shredded nerves on edge.
Unable to pacify them, she all but jumped to her feet when the door, weighed down with up-to-date hygiene guidelines and calendars for blood drives and fetes alike, opened all of a sudden, sending waves of protesting tea rising up to smother her hands in scolding splashes. The nurse who entered, a pretty little blonde who had been called in from Harrenhal General for the summer season and never returned, glanced down at Brienne's hands, automatically launching into a rushed apology. She could only make it halfway through before a yawn interrupted her usually pleasant demeanour.
"Gods, Brienne," Pia mumbled as she covered her mouth, taking a handful of steps forward in order to remove the swirling, though contained, storm of liquid from further drenching calloused, freckled skin. "If we'd known you were in here on your own..." she broke off as another yawn threatened, shaking her head as if the exhaustion was more irritating than anything else and allowing her eyes to close briefly. "We would have had you come and sit at the nurse’s station. You stay still for longer than thirty seconds out there today and you'll be given a job to do."
Brienne wrinkled her brow, her piqued interest clearly visible, if the small smile now lighting up the smaller woman’s face was anything to go by. Although, even the prospect of being put to work couldn’t stop Brienne from toying with the hemline of her shirt, her immediate nerves still needing an outlet, as Pia took the silence between them as a signal to continue talking.
“Only if you wanted to, of course. Nobody’s going to blame you if you’d prefer to wait for news about your sister. Val’s in with her now, and it’s perfectly alright to worry but, you know, Dr Wilde isn’t going to take any crap from Hunt and his band of merry men. Alys is in the best possible hands.”
Brienne heaved a sigh of something rounding relief, although, deep in her heart, she knew they wouldn’t have called in the hospital’s best neurosurgeon if there wasn’t a possibility of lasting damage. But she kept that concern to herself, as she did her fear and guilt and exhaustion. “Tell me what I can do to help.”
"How do you feel about taking blood?"