Work Text
Sansa was too old, by age fourteen, to find any comfort in the concept of a bodyguard.
Bodyguards were men, older and larger than you, who fought for a living. They were men who didn’t flinch when you dug your nails into their eyes, who took the harshest blows you could give them — to the gut, to the chin, to the chest — and didn’t even grunt. They were big enough to pin you down with hands that dwarfed your wrists and threatened to snap you at the bone.
They were ugly. They were brutal.
Brienne was ugly and brutal, too.
She stood as tall as a man. Her shoulders were just as broad. Beneath the chest-plate she had bound already-tiny breasts to protect them from chafing. With her helmet off, Sansa could see her weak chin and water eyes, the smashed nose broken in too many fights. The play of sunlight off her pale hair.
Brienne caught her staring. She stared back, dull-eyed and expressionless, until Sansa looked away.
“Can you fight?” Sansa asked, clasping her knees.
“Fight?” Brienne glanced off into the trees around their campsite. She shrugged, her armor rattling. “I can wield a longsword.” She slid her gauntlets off and showed Sansa her left hand. The knuckles were bruised; the palm was scarred; the fingers were callused. “I can throw a punch,” said Brienne blandly, with just a hint of a sparkle in her eyes. “Can you?”
Sansa withdrew into herself. Images of blood and cheering crowds filled her mind. She felt again the pinch of a too-large man between her legs, the raw scrape of muscle and flesh.
“I don’t like fighting,” she said faintly.
“Why not?” And this time Brienne smiled. “Fighting is beautiful. You’ll see.”
They were ambushed less than five miles from camp. There were three of them, each one shorter than Brienne. Flabby stomachs protruded over their belts, but underneath that weight, each had a muscular frame. Probably workers from the nearest village, hard men accustomed to long hours of labor, men who wouldn’t blow over easy.
Brienne didn’t even have her armor on. She’d been washing her face by the fireside when they jumped her. Her hand-sewn under-jacket lay discarded on the grass — so arms bare, muscles flexing beneath pale skin, Brienne grabbed her longsword and stood. Cold water dripped from her chin. The crushed arc of her nose jutted down to her lips. Her weak eyes glittered in the light.
She brought the longsword down one-handed. She edged close to Sansa, showed the princess her broad, scarred back, barely covered by the bandages she used to strap her breasts down. The hilt of the sword came down with a brutal crash on the first attacker’s head. A heavy-booted foot slammed the next to the ground in an earth-shattering kick. And, biceps bulging, lips curled back in an animal snarl, Brienne drove her blade straight through the third attacker’s chest and killed him where he stood.
Blood flecked her arms, her flattened chest, her cheeks. She smeared it away with the back of her hand, left her lips rouged pink. She met Sansa’s eyes.
“Alright?” she asked casually.
Sansa’s chest heaved up and down in shallow breaths. “Alright,” she said.
Brienne nodded, eyes hooded, pale lashes hiding colorless eyes. She examined the dead men with her head bowed, the hard line of her shoulders straining as she cleaned her sword in the grass.
Brutal and ugly, Sansa realized. Animal and strange.
And yes, beautiful, too.