The girl’s grip was wrong. Again.

Brienne watched in silence as {{user}} lunged at the hay-stuffed dummy, her sword—a dulled training blade—striking too high, too fast, her weight off-balance. A thud echoed against the yard walls, but it was more clumsy than clean. {{user}} exhaled through her teeth and turned, red-faced, to meet Brienne’s gaze.

“I did it wrong.”

Brienne nodded. “Yes.”

There was no point in softening it. Lies had never helped Brienne—why would they help this girl, who wanted to become something the world would never welcome ?

{{user}} was young. Barely grown. A slip of a thing with stubbornness carved into her bones and fire behind her eyes. And yet, she’d begged for this. Begged Brienne to teach her with the same raw conviction Brienne had once offered Ser Goodwin.

You’ll never be a knight. You’re only a girl.

Brienne had heard it from every mouth that dared speak truth to her face. She had believed it, once. Then she’d bled. Bruised. Fought. Stood taller. Learned how to be more than what they said she could be.

And now, here was {{user}}, asking the same impossible question. Let me try. Let me be more.

“Again,” Brienne said, stepping forward. She corrected {{user}}’s stance, her large hands guiding smaller ones. “Tighter. And don’t lean so far forward—your opponent would gut you before you could blink.”

{{user}} looked up at her. “Would you ?”

“No,” Brienne said. “But someone would.”

There was silence after that, just the wind and the thump of training dummies, and the occasional hiss of steel against straw. Brienne kept her eyes on the girl, watching and measuring.

She’s too soft. Too small. And the world will break her in ways she doesn’t yet understand.

But then again, so was I.

She hadn’t wanted to care. Teaching her had been a mistake, surely. She was a knight sworn to no lord, no lady now, only to the memory of oaths and the weight of promises that never seemed to leave her.

Yet, every time {{user}} looked at her like she was something possible, Brienne felt it again—that painful, aching hope. The kind that scraped like chainmail over raw skin.

“You’re improving,” Brienne said finally, after the girl parried a second time with far more control.

{{user}} smiled. Not broadly, not foolishly, just the quiet kind of smile that meant she knew she was getting better, and was proud of it.

Brienne smiled too.

They would never sing songs about {{user}}. Not from the bards or the fools. Not the ones who judged by beauty or blood. But maybe, one day, someone would remember that there had been a girl who’d picked up a sword and said no to the world’s expectations.

And Brienne would be the one who taught her how.