NOW:

"Have you ever heard of Wildfire?"

Brienne pulled her head back. She thought they had been about to share a kiss. One that she, admittedly, shouldn't even had been thinking about - let alone letting it happen. They were cops. They were partners, yet she had been very close to asking him to invite her up to his dump of an apartment.

"Wildfire?" She grabbed the steering wheel, feeling suddenly anxious and unsure of what to do with hands. She had wanted to grab him by the back of his neck in a passionate embrace just a moment earlier, and now he was dousing out her flare of desire with a word that had nothing to with water. "It's a volatile compound." She swallowed thickly. "Aerys Targaryen was rumored to have been funding the research and creation of it."

She didn't meet his unwavering gaze as she said, "And you killed him over it."

Brienne suddenly felt overwhelmingly angry. She turned in her seat, her belt still strapped snugly across her chest. "You killed him so that you could take over as director. You Lannisters," she spat the same as if it were a curse, "All power-hungry monsters."

He blinked at her owlishly, then a snarl slowly overtook his lips. Lips that were so tantalizing close to hers not so long ago. "Is that what you think?" He faced forward, then slammed his fist on the dashboard. She jumped. "Fuck! Is that what you all think?"

"What were we supposed to think!?" She shouted back. In a quieter, hostile voice, she continued. "There were rumors going around. That you approached IAB with information on Aerys. Whether or not that information was real or not – It didn't matter. You were already an outcast. A rat. Then you stormed into his office, and you killed a fellow agent, before turning your gun on Aerys." She took a deep, steadying breath. "What were we supposed to think? The old man was armed with a damn cellphone."

There was a moment of silence, his expression thunderous in the shadows, but instead of exploding defensively like she thought he would, he calmly said, "That cellphone was the trigger to a cache of explosives laced with Wildfire." He didn't allow her a word as he continued lowly, "That cache was underneath the building we were working in. The building where hundreds of men and women worked. Good and honorable people, O'Tarth. Where the children of those men and women were cared for." He sagged in his seat. "Burn them all."

Brienne felt as though all the blood had drained from her face. She could feel her lips moving, trying to form a response to his outburst, but her brain couldn't keep up.

"That's what he said. Burn them all. That's what he had been screaming before I killed him. He was prepared to kill us all, himself included, with the simple push of a button on that fucking cellphone." He looked out of his window, and whispered: "Burn them all."

It took a few moments, before her mouth finally caught up to her brain – or was it vice versa?

"If this is true," she started out slowly, "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

He snorted derisively, eyes still trained through the pane of glass. "Like who? Who would believe me?"

"Your lawyer, to start."

"Ned Stark," he growled around the syllables of the name. "When Stark came to interrogate me-"
"Question you," Brienne tried to correct him softly.

"Interrogate," Jaime snarled in reply, "He judged me guilty the moment he stepped foot in the room. He didn't want to hear my side of the story, because if he was to argue for my innocence he couldn't very well do that if I told him I was guilty, could he?"

"I- I don't-"

"I was, Brienne. I was guilty. I am." He faced her again, and there was a fury that reached his eyes now. "It didn't matter that IAB approached me first or that I was set-up as their scapegoat. I still shot him." There was a finality to his voice when he added: "And I would do it all over again, if it meant he couldn't do what he had set out to do."

She didn't know what to say, if there was anything she could possibly say at all, but Jaime saved her from having to reply when he bodily opened the passenger door and slammed it shut. She stared at the space he had just occupied, unsure if she should run after him, if she should apologize. If she should – she didn't know what.

Instead, she started her car, and glanced once more at his now empty space. It took her a moment to recognize the lump in the darkness, but she suddenly realized he had left his keys behind. She sighed, contemplating leaving him sitting outside his apartment door to stew in his fury, before she switched off the ignition and snatched the keys up.

She climbed three stories of the four story building before she found him. She didn't really think he would sit in front of his own apartment door, rather than coming back down and retrieving his keys, but there he was. He had his knees drawn up to his chest, his head hung low, and she almost wept at how childlike he looked.

She held out the keys on her fingers, letting them dangle and clash against one another, until he slowly lifted his head and took her in. He unhurriedly pulled himself off of the newspaper littered floor, and snatched the keys from her hand without a word.

Brienne had thought that he would unlock his door, go in, and slam it shut in her face. Instead, he let himself in, and then left the door opened behind him in a silent invitation. She took a moment, thought of the trust he had just put in her, and followed after. She closed it behind herself, locking it, and watched as he let himself into what she assumed was the bathroom by way of a door on the left.

The kitchen, if she could call it that, was on her right. It consisted of a fridge, a counter with a sink, and a rusted oven. There were two cabinets, but nothing else. She wandered a few more steps further into the apartment. Directly next to the stove was a small, circular table with two chairs. It was covered in unopened letters and bills. Past the dining table, with at least a foot or so of space between, sat a gray couch.

Across from the couch was a bed.

His bed.

It was unmade, and flanked by two end tables on either side. The end table on her right, closest to the paint-stripped wall, was littered with manila folders, loose papers, and a lone phone charger. The opposite one, closest to a closet door, held a small lamp, a pair of reading glasses, a half-full glass of water, and a once wadded-up brochure on adult classes for dyslexic people.

Intrigued, she picked it up and read its contents. She could hear Jaime in the bathroom, moving around, and waited a moment to see if he would come out. When he didn't, she set the brochure back down and opened the top drawer of the end table.

He's trusting you, she told herself, And you're betraying that trust.

But she glanced inside anyway. She could see a pack of condoms, expired when she looked closer, and a half-empty bottle of lube. There was also a framed photo, a spider crack emanating from the center, of a breathtakingly beautiful Jaime Lannister. He was in full uniform, freshly graduated from the police academy. He was painfully young, and so very happy. He was beaming, kneeling on one knee, his right arm wrapped around the shoulders of a much, much smaller boy. Although his hair was cropped short now, it was buzzed in the photo. It was a beacon of gold, rending the color of his hair nowadays almost ashy in comparison.

She gently placed the frame back into the drawer, and picked up a handheld tape recorder. A quick press of her thumb later, and Jaime's voice filtered out. He sounded quiet, and there was chatter and movement in the background. A few seconds of play revealed he was dictating notes. She glanced at the dyslexia brochure, stopped the recorder and placed it back in the drawer. A few loose photos caught her eye as she did.

She pulled them out, and rifled through them. They were mixed up in no particular order; some were of blonde children at various birthday parties, one of his father and himself at his academy graduation (Tywin wasn't smiling; Jaime's face tight. They were not embracing. They were shaking hands.) A few were of a blonde woman, in various motions at the aforementioned birthday parties. Then there was one, a close-up of Jaime's face, at one of the celebrations. He was smiling, but it was odd. Heated. Like one would smile at a lover.

And it was directed at the blonde.

Brienne swallowed around the lump in her throat. He had mentioned his brother, Tyrion, and his twin sister, Cersei. She had also heard rumors of his relationship with said twin during her time on the force. She hadn't paid it much mind before, having never met the blonde or seen the two interact with one another, but the look on his face in the photos in her hands... She turned the photo over, hoping beyond hope that the names scribbled on the other side didn't contain the one she didn't want to see.

But, her luck had run out the moment she invited Jaime out for drinks earlier that evening.

On the other side, in a familiarly messy, spaced-out scrawl she had come to know as Jaime's handwriting was one name: Cersei.

With a trembling hand, she made quick work of throwing the photos back into the drawer, and managed to shut it without a sound as Jaime emerged from the ridiculously short hallway and stood before her looking as if he had been put through the wringer.

He caught me, she thought.

"Drink?"

"What?"

He blinked at her. "Would you like a drink? I don't have much, but there's always beer."

"No," she shook her head, and stepped forward. "No, thank you. It's late, and we have work in the morning." She brushed by him, trying not to stray too close in the suffocating confines of his studio apartment, and paused by his front door. "I'll-"

What do you say to a man who has unburdened his soul to you?

"I'll see you tomorrow."

The devastated expression on his face told her that was the wrong thing to say.

TBC...

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