Jaime.

There was a club in Liberty City, tucked away down an alley and far away from the sun soaked tourists at the beach front. The sign advertising its name was long broken, but its patrons knew where to find it well enough. It was not particularly interested in attracting new customers.

Jaime had taken a seat on one of the unstable barstools, his back to the darkened room beyond and the girls dancing under pink neon. It was nearing 2 in the afternoon but they already had quite a sizable audience in attendance. Jaime had recognised quite a few of them when he walked in, although they had done their best to hide from his gaze. Some of them were his father's men - the ones who looked the most nervous - but Jaime just smiled quietly and left them to their discomfort.

There were better bars he could be drinking in, ones with better whisky and prettier girls and no suspicious stains on the floor. But as well as the fact that he was enjoying making the others feel uncomfortable, Jaime was quickly becoming charmed by this particular dive. It was quiet for one, and everybody kept their distance. There were not many places Jaime could go to without being stopped by someone wanting something – his time, his phone number, his father's favour. It was so normal to him now that being left alone like this made him feel a little uneasy. It was not a wholly terrible sensation though, and he was slowly becoming comfortable with it. He knew that he would need to slink back in to the city soon enough, to bask in the familiar warmth of his notoriety once again.

Addam had left him to his drink and his solitude nearly an hour ago. The owner owed Aerys money, and their business with him had been concluded rather swiftly. The state of his face told Jaime that this was not the first time he had been asked to pay the debt. He suspected Gregor's handy work. That would explain the slight tremor in the man's hand when he gave them the cash, and the glimmer of fear in his bruised, swollen eyes. It was not the way Jaime preferred to operate, and he had been a little annoyed that he had been sent to scrape up after Clegane.

He had thought that these little games would have kept him satisfied for longer. Over the last month he had been to more booze soaked strip clubs, dimly lit porn shops and sad looking brothels than had had thought possible. There were parts of the city that he realised had only ever exsisted to him in a metaphorical sense before. He had known they were there; he had seen them on the news, had heard the maids talk about them, caught a snatch of an accent that just didn't quite belong. But when he found himself standing in another dead hearted building in another unfriendly neighbourhood, thick with the stench of life and the living, he found that reality kept hitting him in the face. People lived quickly here, Jaime had learned. They tended to die quickly too.

One of the dancers slipped up beside him, allowing her near-naked body to press briefly against his arm as she leant across to get the attention of the barman. When she caught Jaime's eye, she smiled prettily and gave a wink. Her body was lean and looked enticingly agile, and glittered slightly under a thin lick of sweat. She was thinner than Cersei, and her skin was a shade or two darker. He met her wink with a nod but turned away from her, back to his drink. From the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug and walk away. He heard a throaty chuckle.

'She don't talk much, you would have liked that.'

Sandor may have been sat there the whole time, he couldn't be sure. The boy had a habit of slinking around in shadows. He was hunched over a beer, his black hair hiding most of his face, shaking quietly as he continued to chuckle.

Jaime raised his drink in greeting.

'Aren't you a little young to be in an establishment like this?' he asked. Sandor shrugged and took a swig from his bottle nonchalantly.

'Aren't you?'

Jaime conceded the point.

'Well then you're definitely too young to know that she doesn't talk much.'

Sandor may have smiled, but it was too dim to tell.

'No one's too young if they have the money.'

Jaime was once again aware of another strange reality creeping its way in to his own; another way of existing that he had never had to consider before. Not for the first time since starting on this little endeavour, he felt a pang of something approaching guilt. He pushed it back in to the dark echo from which it had sprung.

'Buy you another?' he said, by way of a distraction. Sandor had nearly finished his beer and he nodded silently. Jaime brought another round and moved to sit nearer to the boy, who accepted the bottle with a grunt. They drank nearly half of their beers before either one of them spoke again, and it was Sandor who broke their silence first.

'Is it what you thought it would be, all this?'

'I hadn't thought about it all that much.'

'Don't lie.'

'Alright, I suppose then yes. In some ways.'

'Still lying.'

'Oh really?'

'Maybe you don't know you are. But you are. No one would do this job if they expected it to be like this.'

Jaime looked out across the club, and he could see the air moving across it like a murky soup. There was a ripe smell about it, stale and fresh in equal parts. Sweat, piss, blood, booze, smoke. Not one person was smiling. Beside him, Sandor was flexing his hand slowly. In the half light, the silver white scars across his knuckles were just visible.

'This is just the way it goes, at first. Everyone has to pay their dues.'

Sandor's laugh rattled.

'And then what? You think Selmy doesn't get his hands dirty whenever his boss asks him to? You think Dayne put up his gun when he took the bodyguard job? You think any of them are any better than us, scrabbling around in the gutter?'

He finished his drink with a long swallow and laughed again, short and sharp.

'Well maybe not you. You're connected. Maybe Aerys will raise you up to his side, and you'll put away your gun and make him see the error of his ways. Maybe you'll be the one to change all this, and bring back all those people he had killed, or maimed or raped for a reason he can't even remember any more. Maybe you'll do wonderful things. But then again, maybe you won't.'

Jaime wanted to argue. He could feel the words hot in his throat, and knew already what he would say to every one of his ridiculous points, but they just hung there silently instead. He looked at Sandor, and the scars that littered his body from face to fingers. He remembered the little sister who was gone, and the dancer who didn't say much but had taken his money. He looked at the empty beer bottles on the bar.

'You're wrong' was all he said.