Chapter Text
Brienne is not sure she believes in the gods, but she is absolutely certain that somebody higher up than she in the cosmic order of things is having themselves a bloody good laugh at her expense.
“Me, sir?” she says, cold dread creeping into her tone. The look on Captain Mormont’s face does not suggest the likelihood of a reprieve, but she plows on desperately. “I am not on schedule for tonight. I already had Lannister the night before last, and the night before that.”
Hunt snickers from his perch on the edge of the next desk over. His desk isn’t even in this part of the squad room, but he wandered over when he saw Mormont approach Brienne, with such fake casualness Brienne was instantly suspicious. Well, even more suspicious than she usually is where Hunt is concerned.
“You turning down the opportunity to have him a third time, Bri?” Hunt chortles. “Might as well get the pipes cleaned, it’s been a while…”
Brienne grits her teeth, clenches her hands into fists. Even her toes clench inside cold, sodden shoes and socks, making a small squishy sound under her desk. Mercifully, Hunt is stupid enough to say something like that to her right in front of the Captain, and Jeor Mormont may be old school, but he tries hard not to act like it.
“Stow it, Hunt,” Mormont growls, and Hunt instantly sits up straight. “There’ll be no sexually harassing talk on my watch, are we clear? Get back to work.”
Hunt vanishes back to his own desk, as if by magic. Brienne silently thanks the Captain, even if he did not think to say there would be no harassment on his watch or otherwise. You can’t teach an old bear new tricks overnight, and Mormont does try.
“Sir, I would really, really appreciate not being Lannister’s babysitter tonight. I soaked up half the river this afternoon, I need a shower, I need a meal…” She is almost whining. She is desperate enough to get home and change her shoes (and not have to deal with Jaime Lannister) that she doesn’t much care.
Mormont is shaking his head in that implacable way of his. Sooner move the Wall than him once his mind is made up. “Not my call, Tarth. Lannister asked for you personally, and as long as he’s District Attorney Sparrow’s star witness in the Lannister-Baelish case, Sparrow and this fair city will give him whatever he wants. And apparently he wants you.” Mormont’s broad face is suddenly suffused by an expression not seen since that unpleasantness with his son years ago: embarrassment. “I don’t mean that like Hunt would mean it, you understand? I just mean Lannister apparently feels safest with you on his protective detail…”
Brienne waves this away, having no desire to watch the Captain squirm. She can smell the stench of the river coming off her wet clothes, knows it is why the few desks still occupied at end of shift emptied so precipitately when she walked in, leaving a trail of brown water behind her on the linoleum. Her feet are starting to feel like they are turning into icy fins inside her socks, and she is all out of energy to argue with the Old Bear.
She gives it one final shot, playing on Mormont’s dedication to the service and desire to keep his detectives out of the political fray. “Since when do protected witnesses get to call those shots, sir? We’re police officers, not bodyguards. Surely Lannister can’t just pick and choose who stays with him nights…”
“He can if D.A. Sparrow says he can, and you know what a stickler Sparrow is for cleaning up King’s Landing by any means available. It’s what got him elected, after all.” It is cold comfort to Brienne to see that Mormont thinks no more than she does of having his officers at the beck and call of an overprivileged white-collar criminal like Jaime Lannister, who only dodged jail time by selling out his colleagues (his family). “Think of it this way, Tarth: you took an oath to protect and serve the general public. Until the end of this trial, so far as you’re concerned, Jaime Lannister is the general public.”
“Yes, sir.” She does not hide her disapproval or her weariness, but she gives in to the inevitable.
After a bomb was found under Lannister’s car the day before the trial began, D.A. Sparrow ordered he be accompanied by a pair of uniformed police wherever he went, and a detective to spend the night in his apartment, to keep him safe. For her sins and Jaime Lannister’s amusement, Brienne seems to be it.
Mormont graces her with a sympathetic look. “I’m taking you off the day shift, you can report straight to Lannister’s place tomorrow night. Now go get a shower and change into something dry. Though it would serve him right if you tracked half the city’s refuse into his nice apartment.”
Brienne returns the Captain’s grin, waits until he is back in his office before she slumps on her desk, her head on her arms, her feet wet and cold and smelly.
“Tarth!” Mormont’s deep voice booms across the squad room like a cannon shot, and Brienne sits up so suddenly she nearly goes over backwards, chair and all.
“Sir?”
“Good job catching that pedophile. Did he really try to get away from you by swimming across the Rush?”
“Nearly drowned would be more like it. I pulled him out. And thank you, sir.” She would never have let him drown, but she rather relishes the idea of the reception Ramsay Snow is likely getting down in central lockup. Normally Brienne would not indulge such petty thoughts, but she is wet and her back hurts from wrestling Snow into submission, knee-deep in the torrent of liquid sewage normally known as the Blackwater Rush.
She has to walk past Hunt’s desk on her way out of the squad room. Apparently he decides she looks annoyed enough to cross the line and punch him, so he says nothing. A rare moment of wisdom from the man. Brienne mentally slaps herself for the umpteenth time for ever agreeing to date him. True, she was new to the precinct and naïve enough to think detective status would earn her colleagues’ respect, but she still should have seen it coming. They only went on as many dates as Hunt needed to get her naked, followed by the kiss-off (“Brienne, honey, this is not dating,” Hunt leered at her the morning after, “this is what we call a one night stand”), then came the taunts, the jeers, the suggestive comments.
Hunt and his posse are assholes. But Brienne knows she shares the blame. If she had given herself a reality check before it was too late, they would still talk trash about her, but it would slide off, there would be no chinks in her armor where their hooks could catch, sink in, tear her flesh.
She squelches down the corridor toward the locker room and the showers, praying she has something relatively clean to change into in her locker, when Podrick’s voice hails her from the break room.
She sticks her head in, hoping whatever Pod wants won’t take long. He is in there with Bronn, drinking coffee and eating Pop-Tarts. Brienne’s stomach growls at the smell, but she doesn’t venture closer, not wanting to spoil her colleagues’ appetite with the river miasma she carries around with her like so much baggage.
Though he made detective two years ago, Pod still looks underage, and gets picked for a lot of sting operations posing as a rent boy or druggie. “Hey, I heard you caught Ramsay Snow,” he tells Brienne. “Did you really have to fish him out of Blackwater Bay?”
“Just the Rush. The Bay would have been cleaner.”
Pod sniffs experimentally, wrinkles his nose. “Right on.”
News footage of the trial of Cersei Lannister and Petyr Baelish plays on the small TV. Brienne can’t help staring at the screen: Baelish with his goatee and a look on his face that is oddly reminiscent of Ramsay Snow’s twisted smirk; Cersei Lannister, all golden curls and haughty beauty, as though she were untouchable even at her trial; District Attorney Sparrow wielding his briefcase like the scourge of the gods; Jaime Lannister with his sleek suit and his sleek confidence. And his face. It ought to be illegal for a man to be that good-looking.
As though he read her thoughts, Bronn speaks up. “So which one is this star witness that’s got Sparrow creaming in his smallclothes?”
Pod looks at his partner exasperatedly. “Don’t you ever watch the news?”
Bronn gestures at the TV. “The fuck does it look like I’m doing?”
“It’s that one,” Brienne gestures vaguely when Jaime Lannister is shown amongst several other men in sleek suits, his lawyers.
“Which one?” Bronn asks.
Brienne sighs. “The one that looks like the poster child for the master race by way of GQ.”
Bronn whistles. “Seven hells! No wonder he didn’t want to go to jail, face like his. If I was banged up inside, I’d be first in line to get me a piece of that.”
“Bronn!” The two years Brienne and Pod were partners left them with a solid friendship and the ability to exclaim in outrage simultaneously. And Bronn, whom Brienne suspects was born seedy and only got seedier during long years on the Vice Squad, leaves outrage in his wake the way old boats leave oil slicks.
Bronn is unrepentant, a small smirk hovering in the corner of his mouth. “What? I’m just saying what you’re both thinking.”
Brienne blushes, though nowhere near as warmly as Pod, who looks like he would be grateful if his chair swallowed him up.
“I’m on Lannister’s protective detail tonight,” she blurts out, and why in seventy-seven bouncing hells did she just say that?
Pod and Bronn look at her with sympathy and critical appraisal, respectively.
“I thought Hyle was scheduled for that tonight,” Pod volunteers. Brienne mentally slaps Hunt twice: once for being an ass to her in front of Mormont, and once for coming over to gloat after he got off the hook because Lannister requested her instead.
Why Lannister requested her, she has no idea. The two nights she spent guarding him were tense and awkward until he retired to his palatial bedroom, and Brienne was left alone with his couch and her dire thoughts.
Two nights were enough for Brienne to decide she does not like Jaime Lannister. His sense of humor put her back up, mostly because she could not always tell when he was joking, and he would sometimes make vaguely suggestive comments which she knew better than to take seriously or respond to. His taste in home furnishings made her feel like a bull in a very expensive china shop. Every time she went to pour herself a glass of water, she was certain she would knock over and break something that cost more than her monthly salary. And that’s not even going into how she feels almost offended by his casual self-confidence, the immense ease with which he inhabits his skin.
Even with his injury, a man who looks like Jaime Lannister has never had to work hard for anything, Brienne thinks darkly, and he has never done anyone but himself any good. Exhibit A: he sold his own sister down the river to save himself. He may be the general public she swore to protect, as Mormont said, but if Brienne is going to be saddled with making sure Jaime Lannister lives until the end of the trial, that does not mean she has to take any of his crap.
“You’re not going like that, are you?” Bronn asks her. “You stink like a sewer.”
Brienne scowls at him. “I was on my way to take a shower when you two lassoed me in here. And what do you mean, going like that? I’m not going on a date with the man, I’m supposed to make sure nobody sneaks in and kills him during the night.”
Pod and Bronn are staring at her in the wake of this outburst with varying degrees of, respectively, bemused and wry assessment. If she keeps this up, the idea that she might while away the time protecting Jaime Lannister by fucking him is going to start sounding a lot more plausible.
Bronn’s unerring sense for other people’s soft underbellies is pinging like mad, Brienne thinks when he grins at her. “It must really be something,” he says, “all alone, all night, with a man looks like that, couldn’t fight you off if he wanted to, what with only having one arm.”
“Hand,” Brienne corrects him automatically. “They had to amputate his hand after the incident, he still has the arm. And trust me, neither I nor Jaime Lannister would exchange anything more than a handshake with each other.” And thank you so much for making me sound like a rapist. Fight me off, indeed! she thinks but keeps the thought to herself. No sense in feeding the animals.
“You’re the expert,” Bronn says. His tone is deliberately ambiguous on just what (or whom) she is supposedly the expert.
“Do you want me to text you once you’re there?” Pod asks. They often used to text each other while separated during stakeouts. It started as a way for Brienne to make Podrick more comfortable working alone, but the habit stuck.
She smiles at her former partner with genuine affection. “Thanks, but it’s not necessary, Pod. Babysitting witnesses is always the same. You go, you’re bored out of your mind, you doze on a lumpy couch, you hand them over to the day shift detail, end of. I’ll be fine.”
She nods to the two men and finally heads for the showers, rejoicing in anticipation of warm, clean water washing the stench of the Blackwater Rush out of her hair, off her skin. Resolutely not thinking about Jaime Lannister, or how his couch is the opposite of lumpy and possibly the only thing about his apartment Brienne enjoys.