Chapter Text
Prologue
Brienne is exactly 13 years old when she discovers the joys of vaginal thrush. Her dad has had a special ‘swimming pool’ birthday cake made for her, but, driving it home, he had to brake sharply for a cat, and the cake had slid from seat to footwell, with the result that the pool was now rather grimy and the icing version of Brienne (who had been swimming across the pool) now lay on the tiles at the side, half of her sugary face mangled. In years to come, Brienne will look back on this as a kind of forewarning, but now she only smiles, waits for her dad and grandparents to finish singing for her, and blows out the candles. She shuts her eyes, and wishes for a friend. Just one friend. Someone to immediately link arms with when the teacher tells them to get into pairs. Someone to invite round for her birthday. Someone to have sleepovers with. Someone to go to the cinema with, or shopping. To share secrets with. To chase away the loneliness.
Instead she gets vaginal thrush.
Three weeks before her birthday, she had an ear infection. When it didn’t go away on its own, she went to the GP, who did not bother to ask her if she was a swimmer, instead prescribing her a 5-day course of oral antibiotics. When they didn’t work, she returned and was given a week’s worth of stronger oral antibiotics. These, similarly, did not touch the ear infection but they did finish off the job that the first course of antibiotics started, and wiped out a hell of a lot of Brienne’s friendly gut and vaginal bacteria. The GP finally took a swab test and diagnosed Swimmer’s Ear, a condition which required specialised eardrops. By this time, Brienne had an upset stomach, as well as the painful ear which stopped her from sleeping, and she is most annoyed, when, a few hours after making her birthday wish, her foof starts to itch like crazy too.
Because all this isn’t quite bad enough, the god of misery and discomfort – who plays a large and active role in Brienne’s life – decides that she will also get her first period this week. This means that if she does cave and put a finger or two down there to scratch (in the privacy of her bedroom, naturally), they emerge streaked with blood, as though her vagina has committed some dreadful murder and her hand has stumbled on the crime scene.
Blushing and ashamed, she purchases a pessary and cream from the village pharmacy. The instructions for the pessary reassuringly inform her that “white chalky discharge is normal as the tablet breaks down inside you.” (Inside you. What a curious expression. Inside Brienne used to mean in her stomach. “Get some food inside you.” Or her inner goodness when compared to her looks – “It’s what’s inside you that’s important!” Then puberty hit and the vagina became the default inside. Tampons. Boys. Pessaries. When Trent Reznor sang “I wanna feel you from the inside” you can bet he wasn’t imagining being served up as dinner, or performing gastric surgery, or revelling in his lady’s moral virtues.)
What the pessary directions fail to mention is the unappealing nature of the chalky discharge mingled with blood and those jellyish clots that Brienne’s uterus seems intent on forming. For thirteen years, it has lain dormant, ignored, plotting against her. Now, unleashed, it creates as much mess as possible. The instructions for the thrush treatment also fail to discuss the horror of rubbing cream onto something that just keeps bleeding. Brienne is furious. She had no mother to prepare her for any of this. Just a dad who had one day left a packet of pads and a book called ‘Periods: have you started yet?’ in her room when she was twelve (a year after they’d had the talk at school). At least, she assumes it was her dad who put them there. Perhaps it was some kind of period fairy, a downgrade on a fairy godmother or tooth fairy, but certainly better than the god of misery and discomfort. Brienne had been furious about periods in general – had decided ‘No, I’m not having that’ on the day that their teacher took the girls aside to tell them of the weeks of bloodletting, but this – thrush – just takes the fucking biscuit.
All of this means that Brienne is late for try-outs for the water polo team. (The boys’ water polo team, naturally. The girls have synchronised swimming.) Her ear has had to be kept dry and the chlorine can upset the pH balance of the vagina, so Brienne waits until she is fully recovered. The squad is already formed, already bonded, already averse to interlopers, by the time she turns up in the fifth week of the school year, huge and slick in her costume and cap. It is here that Brienne gets a new name, and meets Jaime Lannister.
*
Whale Girl. She has used waterproof mascara, and has applied a gradual tanning moisturiser so that the contrast between her freckles and pale skin is not quite so stark. She has practised a confident smile in the mirror, keeping her lips together to hide her teeth. She has shaved her legs, armpits and trimmed her pubic hair. If only there were a razor or scissors that could cut away flesh and bone, or just abnormality, as easily and painlessly as hair. But there isn’t, and she is Whale Girl.
Brienne is used to being bullied (or as used to it as any sensitive teenaged girl can be), and she long ago saw the myth that “boys aren’t as catty as girls” for the horseshit that it is, but she is still hurt by the vitriol that these boys throw at her. Perhaps it hurts because she had actually made an effort. Perhaps because this is the one place her body should be an asset, and if it is still mocked here, what hope is there anywhere else? Perhaps it is because she already feels vulnerable, her costume disguising nothing. Or perhaps it is because when her eyes first meet Jaime Lannister’s, her heart does a strange little beat that she can’t quite ignore. Is it just because he is beautiful and looking at her? Is she that shallow? She gazes back, unable to look away, and like Icarus flying close to the sun, she plummets. Jaime’s eyes drift away from her eyes to take in her nose, her big lips, heavy jaw and then her huge shoulders. He doesn’t smirk or roll his eyes. He looks sorry for her, but also slightly repulsed. He steps back, and Brienne, in one of those awkward adolescent attempts at humour, mumbles, “Don’t worry. Looking like this isn’t contagious.” The attempt at dry self-deprecation instead becomes cringing self-abasement, and Jonothor Darry and Gerold Hightower hoot with laughter in the background.
“You gonna make friends with the whale, Jaime?” says Gerold.
“Maybe you can set her free from the theme park,” says Jonothor.
“Or maybe she’ll bite your leg off and you’ll end up dying in your quest for revenge,” laughs Jon Connington, apparently more literary than Jonothor.
“Yeah. No, thanks,” mutters Jaime, and he walks away, leaving Brienne pink and cowering. If she were small and pretty, at least one of the boys would have stepped in to protect her, but Brienne is too big and ugly to arouse this instinct in any of them. She makes the team because she is too good not to, and they make her life a misery because they are too cruel not to.
She regularly begins practise sessions by being shoved into the pool, always under the nose of the eagle-eyed Mr Tarly who becomes mysteriously short-sighted when it comes to the bullying of Brienne. The straps of her costume are ironically pinged by Owen Inchfield. For the first few weeks, unless specifically directed, the boys do not pass to her. One dreadful day, the god of misery and discomfort colludes with Brienne’s uterus, presumably after watching Carrie together. Darry starts to do the Jaws theme, and Brienne – assuming this is simply another joke referencing a large, water-dwelling beast – tries to ignore it. It is only when Mr Tarly orders her to “get out of the pool now and sort yourself out” that she realises. There isn’t much blood, but when the boys refuse to carry on practise – “I’m not swimming in that. Looks like a fucking shark attack.” – Tarly makes no attempt at reprimanding them.
“All right, Humpback/Spermy/Old Blue?”
“Have you still got Jonah in there?” with a nod at her abdomen.
When Brienne sneezes, rather than being told “bless you,” she is congratulated on clearing her blowhole.
Lannister, the new captain this year, could probably stop it, but he never makes the attempt. Only Addam Marbrand comes anywhere near kindness, going so far as to give her covert smiles now and then.
She starts to gets crippling stomach aches on practise days and has to go to the doctor who recommends Mebeverine. Then there are the fainting spells, occurring during school time, a few hours before training. The doctor, after checking she is not pregnant, suggests that she has been unknowingly hyperventilating and recommends breathing exercises. Brienne does them and the fainting ceases. Her troubled sleeping continues, as does the desire to starve herself – to at least make herself thinner as she cannot make herself shorter. She is close to dropping out of the team when, going through a drawer one day as she tidies her room, she comes across a letter her mother wrote her shortly before she died. Brienne has read it before, but its message – her mother’s love for her, her confidence that Brienne will grow into a good, brave woman – has never seemed so important as it does right now. She tucks it into the side pocket of her bag, wanting the words close when she is at her lowest ebb.
And so she stays on the team, but the problem with playing on a team of little shits is that when you win, the little shits win too. After a few months, Brienne has permanently ousted Owen Inchfield from the first team – a feat that does little to improve her popularity. After six months, she is second only to Lannister with regards to goals scored, has more assists, and is just as fast a swimmer. Late in the school year, they play the very prestigious all-boys’ school team who won the cup last year. It is Brienne’s goal, coming in the final minute, which takes her team through to the final of the Westeros Schools Championship for the first time in fourteen years. Brienne watches as her teammates celebrate her winner several metres away from her. The boys on the opposite team – the team that Brienne just knocked out – watch her slightly pityingly. In the cleaning cupboard which doubles as her private changing room at this all boys’ school, she steels herself enough to survive the coach trip home, earphones in to keep out the sexist songs about which lucky girls they would like to fellate them, and the snide comments about her. Brienne half wonders why some schools bother with cheerleading squads when it seems the easier way to raise testosterone levels and encourage team spirit is simply to place one very ugly girl on the team. The amount of male bonding that goes on through the abuse of her is sensational.
When it comes to the final, Brienne plays without heart and without enthusiasm, and they are hammered. She feels ambivalent: sadness combined with savage satisfaction in seeing her teammates manfully holding back tears. The satisfaction does not last long however.
“You lost it for us on purpose,” Jaime mutters, standing over her as she hoists herself out of the pool. The water is particularly cold today, and she is shivering as soon as she is out, longing to get back to the girl’s changing room and be alone. She tries to go around him but he sidesteps quickly, blocking her. “Admit it.”
Brienne is about to deny it, about to declare that while she knows she did not play well today, she certainly didn’t intentionally sabotage the game – but she can’t.
“Why?” he demands. “Why didn’t you play today the way you played last game?”
She can’t manage to raise her eyes to meet his, but she does manage to say in a choked, too high voice, “You didn’t even say well done last game. You’re the captain – if you’d done it, they would have too.”
“You blew our biggest game in years because we didn’t gather round and hug you and tell you how wonderful you were last match? Shall I bring you a sticker and lollypop next time? You pathetic, spiteful little...” He trails off.
Her eyes are brimming with tears by this point, and he finally lets her sidestep him. She moves quickly to the boys on the other team, holding out her hand to shake in congratulations, wanting it done so she can get to the shower and be alone.
Before she has shaken hands with more than three, though, a pleasant voice calls out to her. “Hey, Tarth, want your towel? You look cold.”
She turns to see Jonothor Darry holding out not just her towel but her bag, which seems to have been quickly stuffed with the uniform which she had earlier left hanging up in the changing room; evidently Jonothor had slipped in there to get her stuff. Instinctively, Brienne reaches out to grab the bag and towel, but just as her fingers are about to close around them, he jerks them sideways, and drops them into the pool.
It takes Brienne a few seconds to remember that her mother’s final letter is in that bag, already sinking slowly to the bottom of the pool. She cries out – a wounded animal noise – and dives in. She drives herself to the bottom, retrieves the bag, brings it to the surface, and deposits it with shaking hands on the side of the pool. There is almost complete silence as she pulls herself out, only the deferential apologies of Jonothor reaching her ears. “Didn’t mean to…” “I thought you’d got hold of it…” There are a few parents watching in the gallery which is why he is bothering to pretend.
Brienne ignores them all. Her hands fumble to get to the side pocket, and she is pleading under her breath for the letter to be okay. It isn’t okay. The water has got in and the words are smudged beyond all recognition.
Later that night, with red eyes and her father hovering awkwardly nearby, she will largely be able to rewrite the letter, for she had known it almost by heart. Right now though, all she sees is that her mother’s final words have been taken from her. That her hopes and her love for her young daughter are gone. With a quivering lip, Brienne stands up and punches Jonothor Darry so hard that he is knocked backwards into the pool. This time it is his blood darkening the swimming pool, his nose stunningly broken.