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It is her scars that first draw Lady Sansa to her. Sansa touches Brienne’s face with a gentleness Brienne had not known could exist, her fingertips like feathers, her touch somehow soothing and tickling all at once.
“So much pain,” she says with a frown, then presses her palm flat to Brienne’s cheek as if she could heal it with only her touch.
“No more than I could handle, my lady,” Brienne tells her, trying and failing to keep the reverence from her voice. She has always had a soft spot for kindness, a weakness for gentle strength, and Sansa is overfull of both.
Brienne’s fingers between her Lady’s thighs are firmer than Sansa’s on her face, more insistent, but are gentle all the same, driving the sweet girl before her to peaks that wash over her like a sigh, her whole body relaxing into contented bliss. She gives herself so sweetly, with such gentle trust, a trust that is all the more treasured for how Brienne knows how rarely it’s given. It’s been abused too much by those in Sansa’s past. To be considered worthy of such faith is as humbling as it is appealing, and Brienne knows that Sansa’s favors are a gift, something to be earned and treasured.
Sansa had been the first. Brienne’s first. Long ago, Brienne had thought she loved, she thought she knew devotion, but now it seems only a child’s game – spillikins scattered over the floor, a rag doll worn soft with attention. From the first moment that Sansa moved into her arms and turned her face up to be kissed, Brienne had known the difference. She feels no less for Renly than she ever did. She only knows that what she feels for Sansa – what she feels with Sansa – is like the sun compared to a hearthfire.
“Florian,” Sansa calls her sometimes, “my Florian,” the smile on her face creasing her cheeks into dimples as she teases without malice, as she invites without expectation. Knowing that Sansa admires her just as she is makes Brienne long to be more, to be a person worth such admiring regard. There’s a thrill in knowing that Sansa sees in her the knights and heroes Brienne idolized in her youth, that Sansa looks at her and sees honor and strength and goodness. All the things Brienne has looked so hard for in the world, for so many years. All the things she sees in Sansa. It is shameless how Brienne basks in her approval, how she delights that Sansa craves her own approval in return.
She expects Sansa to keep them secret; Brienne is no fool, she knows the ways of the world. She saw firsthand how even the fiercest love could be unacceptable to others simply due to its form. Together they might be in either of their separate bedchambers (“We are not wed,” Sansa once laughed in soft delight after padding on stocking feet to Brienne’s rooms in the hush of night, “it would be improper to share a room.”), but there is a world of difference between the inside of a bed chamber and the out. Sansa seems to feel no shame, though. She takes Brienne’s arm as they walk the gardens and the godswood, touches her face with tender affection, tracing Brienne’s scars so often that Brienne could almost love them.
“It’s good for her, having you here,” her brother Jon tells Brienne on one of his visits. He comes from the Wall yearly, bringing news and collecting men and supplies to take on his return, kindling a light in Sansa’s eyes at the sight of him, the last of her siblings. Brienne had thought he would question her presence, or challenge her relationship with his sister, but he’s never treated her with anything but the same kindness that is as much part of Sansa as the red of her hair and the blue of her eyes. What must he think of me? she wonders. What must be believe about us?
“My sister has a soft heart for wounded things,” he says, as if her thoughts are written in the air above her head. He smiles to show he means it as no belittlement. Something in his manner tells Brienne he shares such softness himself.
“As do I,” Brienne says in return. And it is true, of both of them, but Brienne knows it is not the whole of the truth. She may never know the whole of the truth with Sansa. Somehow that’s more comfort than distress, and Brienne smiles to herself at how fitting it seems. Gods willing, they’ll have more years than they can count to try to understand it.