Chapter Text
Chief Detective Jaime Lannister glanced at the address on his phone then shoved it back into his jacket pocket. Normally he didn’t work on Saturdays, but Jaime couldn’t resist the opportunity to skip his nephew Joffrey’s wedding and question a witness without a certain statuesque blonde shadowing him.
The tiny resort town where Podrick Payne was hiding had seen better days. Most of the houses had peeling paint and overgrown landscaping. Decades ago, the south shore of Blackwater Bay had attracted the rich and famous of King’s Landing, but air travel had made weekends in Dorne or the Arbor far more enticing.
Jaime finally spotted the right house, turned down the long gravel drive, and cursed loudly.
A dusty little blue compact car sat in front of the large, ramshackle house. The car’s faded Evenfall Lacrosse bumper sticker left no doubt as to who owned it. Brienne Tarth, public defender and since Friday the bane of Jaime’s existence, had every right to question witnesses, but they’d agreed to meet here on Monday.
Earlier in the week, Brienne would have listened to him. Despite being on opposite sides professionally, they had become friends in the months since she’d joined the public defender’s office. Brienne already knew Tyrion from law school, so the three of them often hung out together on Friday nights, commiserating about work and watching sports in their favorite bar.
At first, Jaime had resisted his brother’s suggestion that they all meet up after work. Why should he bother? Brienne was just the big, quiet public defender who shuffled through Dragon Gate station to talk to one lowlife client after another.
Then Jaime had testified in one of her trials.
In the courtroom, Brienne wasn’t at all shy. Her style of questioning was blunt and brutal, and she usually got what she needed. She was stubborn when she thought she was right (always), and she could hold her own, not just with Jaime but the other cops as well. Only a few days earlier, Jaime had watched Brienne verbally dress down Officer Hyle Hunt, who propositioned her every time she came into the station. When Hunt still didn’t take the hint, Brienne had punched him in the kidneys. It had been the highlight of Jaime’s week.
Brienne had spent a lot of time at the station a lot lately, ever since she’d been assigned to defend Tyrion’s former bodyguard, the last man who’d seen Shae before she disappeared. Even Tyrion, who had initially believed Bronn’s story, thought the bodyguard was guilty.
Bronn had a long criminal record, but Brienne insisted he hadn’t murdered and disposed of Tyrion’s girlfriend. Jaime used to admire her tenacity, misplaced though it was, until she’d come to his office Friday.
That visit had turned Brienne from a friend into a threat. Not only had she insisted that Bronn was innocent, she had theorized that Shae’s disappearance was part of a larger conspiracy, and she’d pointed the finger of blame at Jaime’s sister.
Cersei craved power, but she was no killer. Jaime was certain of that. His word hadn’t been enough for Brienne, who had accused him of protecting his sister. She might as well have just called him a dirty cop and been done with it. Between the Targaryen raid and his family’s questionable business dealings, plenty of people had said it behind Jaime’s back.
Brienne’s opinion shouldn’t matter to him. She was just a casual friend and a misguided idealist.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Jaime tried to shake off his bad mood. Another detective had interviewed the kid right after Shae had disappeared, but Jaime wanted to cover his bases. Trant wasn’t his best detective by a long shot. It wasn’t out of the question he’d missed something important.
The doorbell was hanging from frayed wires, so Jaime opted to knock.
After nearly a full minute had passed, a dark-haired woman opened the door, staring at him in frank appreciation. “That big lady said you might turn up. She did not say you looked like an underwear model.”
Jaime bit his lower lip and offered her the slight smirk which usually made women eager to do whatever he asked. The first time Addam had seen Jaime do this, he’d whistled under his breath and asked whether Jaime used his powers for good or evil. Jaime had only laughed. He wasn’t above a little flirting to get what he needed: information, faster forensics results, or a table in a crowded restaurant.
The woman pointed down the hall, and Jaime made his way to a cramped living room. Piles of books and shopping bags covered a sagging couch, and two cats lounged atop the discolored cushions. A thin young man with dark hair sat on the coffee table: Podrick, Tyrion’s assistant. Tired of the press hounding him, the kid was spending time with relatives.
Brienne perched on a nearby ottoman. Her stunning blue eyes narrowed as she caught sight of Jaime. He didn’t bother trying the lip-biting trick on Brienne. The one time he’d done it around her, Brienne had just arched an eyebrow and laughed.
“Sweetheart, I thought we agreed to talk to the kid together,” Jaime chided. He’d actually shouted that the kid was off limits until Monday just as Brienne had slammed his office door behind her.
Brienne shot him a contemptuous glare and held up her phone. “Funny, I don’t have any messages from you, Detective, yet here you are.”
She must still be furious, if he was “Detective” again. Jaime shrugged, teeth bared in a grin. “Don’t let me interrupt. You know I love to watch you work.”
Brienne dropped her legal pad into her attaché case. “I have what I need. Podrick has been very helpful.” She stood and pushed past Jaime, deliberately bumping his shoulder as she passed him.
Jaime waited until he heard the front door close behind her then trained his most reassuring smile on Podrick. “I hope you don’t mind answering a few more questions."
Olenna Tyrell held up her glass with one heavily bejeweled hand. “To Joffrey and Margaery. May the Seven give them everything they deserve.” She tapped her glass against Margaery’s and took a dainty sip of wine.
Joffrey rolled his eyes before he clinked glasses with his beautiful bride.
Margaery really did look stunning, Sansa noted. She ought to. Margaery had had enough practice at playing bride. She’d married Renly barely a year ago, after all.
Joffrey would look quite handsome with his sharp suit and perfectly styled platinum blonde hair if not for his ever-present sneer. Joff glanced down the head table, past his bride, his sister Myrcella, and two Tyrell cousins, openly ogling Sansa’s breasts. She hastily adjusted her low-cut bridesmaid gown, and Joffrey winked at her.
Sansa shuddered as Joffrey turned away and drank his entire glass in one long swallow. Tyrion took Sansa’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
Sansa offered Tyrion a quick smile. She still didn’t really trust him, but their sham of an engagement had at least gotten Joffrey to leave her alone. It also made Tyrion look suspiciously callous about his on again, off again girlfriend’s disappearance, as evidenced by the constant voicemail messages from the scary blonde public defender whom Sansa had once mistaken for a man. Brienne Tarth swore she just wanted to talk, but Loras had warned Sansa not to trust the woman who’d let Renly die.
An odd noise further down the table caught Sansa’s attention, and Tyrion dropped her hand as he hurried to climb off his chair.
Joffrey was choking. He sputtered, fingers scrabbling madly at his throat, eyes bulging. Loras thumped the groom on the back, perhaps thinking he’d choked on the slice of cake in front of him. In his panic, Joffrey elbowed Loras in the stomach, pushing him away.
Margaery was sobbing, hands fluttering without knowing what to do. Her grandmother pulled the bride away as Joffrey collapsed to the floor. The other girls huddled around Margaery, while Joffrey’s brother Tommen bolted from the table.
Sansa stood, backing away in horror as Joffrey continued to scratch at his own throat, his face red and growing darker. As often as she’d secretly wished he would have some sort of accident, it was horrifying to watch it happen only a few feet away.
Tyrion approached his nephew just as Cersei reached her son. She begged Joffrey to breathe as she cradled him in her arms.
Joffrey did not breathe, his face purple and his legs kicking out against the table leg. The table pitched forward, scattering food, wine, and flowers across the floor and exposing the twitching groom to his guests.
They all saw when Joffrey turned and pointed at Tyrion just before convulsions wracked the younger man’s body. His mother screamed.
As a clamor of voices filled the ballroom, a hand seized Sansa’s elbow. “Miss Stark,” an urgent voice whispered in her ear.
Sansa instinctively wrenched out of his grasp, whipping around and catching her elaborate necklace on the branch of a decorative tree behind the table. Purple crystals scattered on the floor.
She recognized the cringing man. “Dontos?” she asked, confused. Why was he wearing a waiter’s tuxedo? Dontos Hollard was the terrible magician who had provided entertainment at the Casterly Rock corporate holiday party months ago. Joffrey had poured a bottle of wine on the man and threatened to set him on fire. Sansa had finally managed to break her engagement to Joffrey not long after that.
“We must go,” Dontos whispered urgently.
“Why?” Sansa asked, the chaos around her too much to take in.
“They will suspect you had something to do with this.”
Many people disliked Joffrey, but Sansa loathed him. She suspected that he’d ordered the hit on her father and she didn’t trust the police at the Twins—all of them Freys and likely on the Lannister payroll—who insisted that her brother and sister-in-law’s fatal car crash had been accidental.
Sansa glanced back just in time to see Joffrey’s convulsions stop suddenly.
“No!” Cersei wailed, shaking her son’s limp body. Blood dripped from his mouth and his eyes were blank.
When Dontos took her arm again, Sansa let him lead her swiftly from the ballroom.
Jaime cursed as traffic along the Kingswood Tollway slowed to a crawl. The road narrowed ahead to accommodate idle construction equipment no one would touch until Monday.
The sun had set, and judging by the lightning flashing over Blackwater Bay, a storm would roll in soon. Jaime had already missed Joffrey’s farce of a wedding in the Great Sept of Baelor. At this rate, he might miss the entire reception as well. Cersei would be furious, but that was nothing new. Jaime hadn’t done anything right in her eyes in years.
Spotting an exit sign ahead, Jaime flicked on his turn signal. That would be the old Kingsroad. It only had two lanes, but at least it wasn’t under construction. Car after car ignored his signal and refused to let Jaime switch lanes. Finally Jaime gave up and turned on the police flashers he kept in his car for emergencies. He grinned as cars immediately cleared a path for him.
In under a minute, Jaime was cruising along the Kingsroad. The old road skirted the edge of the forest, ancient trees blocking out the lights of the nearby highway and the city across the water. Jaime’s phone vibrated in his pocket. The caller ID showed Detective Addam Marbrand, a childhood friend who had recently joined the KLPD from Ashemark.
Jaime had asked Addam to provide security at the wedding. Normally off-duty uniforms would be sufficient, but the entire city was on edge with the mayoral election just weeks away. In the last year, District Attorney Ned Stark had been shot and killed, and a backpack bomb had exploded at the Blackwater Hotel during a political debate. With nearly every major player in King’s Landing in the ballroom of the Red Keep this evening, Jaime wasn’t taking any chances.
“Addam, save your lecture, I’m on my way,” Jaime said when he picked up the phone.
A heavy sigh greeted him amidst crackling static. “You’d … hurry, Jaime.”
Jaime checked his phone. One bar of signal. “Is Tyrion drunk yet? You know how much he loves weddings.” Tyrion had been married once. It hadn’t ended well.
“Joffrey’s … can’t be sure … looks like … Need you here.” Static swallowed most of Addam’s words.
“Addam, you’re breaking up. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” Jaime ended the call, dropped the phone onto the passenger seat, and pushed his car over the speed limit. Addam was a capable detective. If he needed backup, Tyrion’s penchant for drunken singing was the least of their problems.
Ten minutes later Jaime spotted hazard lights flashing in the darkness ahead. The car was parked on the side of the road, its hood up and trunk open. Jaime knew that absurdly tiny car, as well as the ridiculously long legs and toned backside visible as Brienne rummaged in the trunk.
Reluctantly, Jaime pulled over. Brienne straightened up warily, squinting into his headlights, grease smeared on her hands, dirt on her tan slacks. She reached behind her and pulled out a tire iron.
Jaime got out of the car. “Car trouble, sweetheart?”
Relief flashed across her face for a moment before suspicion replaced it. “My name is Brienne, not sweetheart. Did you do something to my car, Detective?”
Jaime almost laughed, the notion was so ludicrous. “Of course not, Brienne . Did you call a tow truck yet?”
She dropped the tire iron back into the trunk and dug into her pocket, smearing grease on her blazer, and cursed as she pulled out her phone. “No signal.”
Jaime checked his. No signal. He watched Brienne a moment, pondering just how satisfying it would be to leave her here. She might not try to go behind his back again. Or she might file an official complaint.
Lightning flashed close by, and thunder boomed. Rain began to fall, fat drops promising an imminent heavy shower. Jaime sighed. He couldn’t really leave Brienne here. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the city.”
Brienne folded her arms across her chest. The rain came down harder, soaking them both within seconds. She gritted her teeth and conceded, “Thank you.”
Jaime retreated into his car to clear off the passenger seat while Brienne carefully closed her trunk and hood, turned off her hazard lights, and locked her car. Jaime doubted anyone would steal such a nondescript little car. He wasn’t even sure how such a large woman managed to fit into it.
Brienne dropped gracelessly into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Water dripped from her straw blonde hair and ran down her long neck. She was clutching her attaché case on her lap, her soaked lilac shirt clinging to her skin. Jaime had seen her righteous, angry, triumphant, frustrated, but seeing Brienne vulnerable was new and strangely appealing.
Jaime dragged his gaze back up to her eyes. Deep blue, defiant, and at the moment rather pissed off at him. That brought him back to reality. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. “Let’s go.”
The rain fell in waves. Sometimes it rained so hard the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up, and Jaime was forced to slow the car to a crawl just to stay on the road. The silence was oppressive.
"You couldn't wait to talk to the kid?"
Brienne stared out her side window. "Neither could you," she muttered.
"I had a wedding to avoid.”
“And I was avoiding you," she snapped, angry but honest. This was familiar territory for them, though their disagreements were usually about petty things: sports and movies, classic cars or the best Braavosi takeout in the city. They’d managed to separate the personal from the professional until now, yet Jaime couldn’t help feeling that she was judging him as a cop and as a man.
“Great plan,” he said drily, returning his gaze to the narrow swath of light cast by the headlights.
The windshield wipers squeaked rhythmically. Brienne sighed. “Why were you avoiding the wedding?”
She knew that neither Jaime nor Tyrion got along well with Cersei, since both complained about her, but neither talked much about Joffrey. The less said about him the better. His siblings were nothing like him, from what Jaime had seen. Myrcella had been arrested once, for breaking into her school’s swimming pool late at night with Trystane Martell, but that was kid stuff. She and Tommen seemed like good kids.
A road sign flashed by. Twenty miles to King’s Landing. He might as well just tell her. “My wedding was at the Great Sept. It’s not my favorite place.”
Brienne flinched. “I didn’t know you were married.”
“I wasn’t,” Jaime conceded. He hadn’t talked about this in years. He hadn’t needed to. It was one of those horrible train-wreck weddings people loved to talk about. “Come on, I’m sure Tyrion told you all about it. It’s a great story if it didn’t happen to you. Star-crossed lovers, rival families, the whole nine yards. On our wedding day, I found out she was my twin sister.”
Jaime snuck a glance at Brienne. Her eyes were wide with shock. Brienne had known his brother since law school, and Tyrion was the one who’d uncovered the truth. Had he really not told her?
Tyrion, who had grown up watching old home movies of Joanna Lannister and hearing about Aerys Targaryen’s obsession with her, had been the first in nearly twenty years to look at Cersei and wonder why she looked so much like the Lannisters. Joanna and Aerys’s wife, Rhaella, had delivered babies on the same day at Blessed Mother Hospital. When Rhaella’s daughter died in her sleep the first night, Aerys had snuck into Joanna’s room and switched the babies.
“I’m so sorry,” Brienne breathed. She sounded sincere, but Jaime had heard that so many times it had lost all meaning.
He considered making a joke or saying something cruel, but he just nodded. It had been a dark period for both brothers: Jaime by turns furious and anguished, and shortly after, Tyrion’s own brief marriage had ended badly. Jaime had left town and tried to start over in a new city. It hadn’t worked. By the time he came back, Cersei was married and had two children. Jaime had tried to forge a more familial relationship with Cersei, but that was a joke.
They rode in silence for several minutes before Brienne spoke. “If you could drop me off at my place, I’d appreciate it.”
“Where do you live?” In all the evenings they’d spent together, Brienne had never mentioned where she lived.
“Cobbler’s Square.”
Jaime shook his head. “Sorry, I have to go straight to the Red Keep.” Marbrand rarely called for backup, so Jaime was inclined to assume something unpleasant had happened. If he was lucky, it was just a minor scuffle or Tyrion giving his “god of tits and wine” speech again.
Jaime glanced at Brienne’s disheveled clothes and wet hair. Jaime had a clean suit in a garment bag on the backseat, but Brienne wasn’t so lucky. “You’re underdressed, but you’ll have to come with me.”
Brienne frowned and picked at her damp blouse. “I’m not going to a wedding dressed like this.”
Jaime smiled grimly. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. No one will be looking at—”
Lightning flashed, momentarily blinding him, and thunder clapped so loudly Jaime’s ears rang. A huge tree slammed down across the road directly in front of them. Jaime hit the brakes, tires squealing as they skidded across the wet pavement.
Metal shrieked, pain lanced through Jaime’s head, and the world went black.