The Long Winter | Jaime Lannister X Stark OC | GOT/ASOIAF

The Old Lion

They kept Brienne hidden, of course. Qyburn would undoubtedly know she had gone, but seeing as he was likely ordered by Lord Bolton to kill her - and instead kept her alive for his own sick experiments, judging from the gruesome contents of the journals present in the cell - there was no one he could tell without being punished for his carelessness. Disobeying Bolton was a fast way to end up in a similar state to many of Qyburn's own experiments.

To allow the woman to recover, they had smuggled her up to Dacey's quarters, which would be of little interest to anyone. When she was able to speak in coherent sentences, she had little to tell them that she hadn't already. Bolton men had asked to take Lady Morganna, Brienne had refused, and things had gotten violent. Ren, Jaime and Dacey all marvelled at the fact she had gone up against a dozen armed men alone instead of just backing down.

"I had no chance," Brienne said. "And no choice. Lady Rosennis had asked me to protect her daughter, so that's what I did,"

From that moment Ren had vowed to himself to ensure that the woman - still half a girl, really - was handsomely rewarded when all this was done.

They smuggled Brienne out of the castle when she was fit to ride again, but she had not gone happily.

"I don't want to leave Lady Morganna in the hands of those monsters," She protested stubbornly. "They killed her mother!"

"Your presence here will get us all killed," Ren said flatly. "Bolton has gone to a lot of effort to keep Morganna alive - he has plans for her, which won't be pleasant but at least he won't kill her. If you wish to help, linger around the area and listen for word of us travelling north. Once we're on the road, if you can get her away from the soldiers, you can guard her to your heart's content,"

So Brienne left, albeit reluctantly. They used the grandiose chaos of Lord Tywin's arrival to mask the single, hooded rider leaving the castle one evening. The arrival of the Lannister contingent was as deliberately impressive as expected, and met with no small amount of hostility from the Northmen present, still resentful from the previous battles where they had lost friends, comrades.

Robb's death had not helped matters. Though the lords had mostly come to the agreement that Tywin had not ordered his assassination as it would make no political sense, the common soldiers had not. Despite not being convinced that neither Tywin or Cersei had a hand in the murders, Ren was thankful for the presence of the Baratheon and Tyrell men at Harrenhal. They evened tempers between the North and the Westerlands, preventing a full-blown battle within the castle walls rather than the few small brawls that broke out.

Talks between the lords began almost immediately. The aims of the treaty remained largely the same as what Ren, Loreon and Tyrion had drafted in King's Landing. These meetings merely involved going through and confirming each of the clauses, and arguing over minutiae. Time-consuming and dull, granted, but necessary.

Lord Tywin was as impressive as men said. He could silence men with a mere look, and when he spoke, everyone quieted at once; if any man had been born to rule, it was him. Rather like Ren himself, Tywin sat in silence at first, listening to the arguments of other men before giving his opinion. Unlike Ren, that opinion usually became law.

Every day when the talks were over, Ren went to see Morganna. Arya spent much of the day at her cousin's bedside, as the girl drifted in and out of consciousness but never neared lucidity. Qyburn was keeping her dosed up on milk of the poppy, apparently to give her body time to rest and heal. Ren suspected it was to keep her quiet, whatever she had seen, but now was not the time to argue. If it kept his sister alive, he had no choice.

Occasionally she muttered in her sleep, however, and there were definitely moments where her eyes would open and she'd seem a lot more present than normal. Often the words 'Mother', 'Robb' and 'no' left her lips. It sickened Ren to the stomach, thinking about what his sister had seen, and the state she was kept in now, bringing him the closest to tears that he had been since the day his mother had died. He kept his grief at bay, behind a wall thicker than those of Harrenhal. If that wall broke, so would he, and then he would be as good as dead in this place.