The End

Who: Brett
Where: Around
When: Early hours

After he’d left the restaurant, Brett hadn’t gone straight back to the apartment. Instead, he’d driven down to the river, parked up around a half a mile upstream from the docks and sat there, watching the lights in the distance over the water, the dull sounds of an area that never stopped, not really. He’d wondered if he was making a mistake, giving Marshall another chance. Maybe, maybe not, but he felt that he didn’t really have a choice in the matter. If it were just down to him, then maybe, but it wasn’t - no matter what she said. He couldn’t go back to the apartment and watch her eyes and say that Marshall was out. She’d go with it, he knew she would. Without question. But he could imagine that moment, a little light dying in those eyes. He couldn’t have that.

And anyway, if he did that, said that, there would always be that little question, that small doubt about his motivations. About whether he was motivated by jealousy of the other man. That he was possessive of Eris wasn’t news. He knew it, she knew it. She was his, nobody else’s and merely thinking about it stirred that in him. Having another man on the scene, one that had shared so much with her in the past - that made him twitch. But that wasn’t a good reason to turn down staff.

He’d needed to be sure of his decision however, before he returned to the apartment. Sure that she wasn’t going to push a button, set him off, make him say something that would be the truth, but that he wouldn’t realise until the words were coming out of his mouth. That woman, that annoying, frustrating, beautiful, fascinating woman had a uniquely gifted way of getting to him.

It was, therefore, after midnight when he finally arrived back at their building, giving the nod to the clerk and riding the elevator to their penthouse apartment. Everything was quiet, dark as he headed in. He hadn’t expected that - he’d thought that she would wait up for him. She surely wanted to know... And then he found the letter. A single piece of paper, covered with her familiar looping script, close spaced. His heart lurched up into his mouth, beating furiously as he picked it up and began to read.

She’d asked him to read through to the end, and at first, he couldn’t have put it down. The contents, what he discovered - that Hollis had set him up, that that slimy fucking bastard had ruined his career, his life, everything that he had once been - she definitely had his attention, but he read on. And the dread arrived with those simple words ’I couldn't let that go unanswered. ‘

He didn’t even breath as he hurriedly read through the third, the fourth paragraphs, desperately hoping that the idea of what she’d decided which had crashed into his imagination was wrong, oh so wrong. Only, there it was, that terrible confirmation, ’He's going to die,'. Brett didn’t read any further. Stuffing the paper thoughtlessly in his pocket, he grabbed the keys up and ran, actually ran to the elevator, thundering on the button until the car arrived, the boy in it physically taking a step backwards in fear as the larger man barrelled inside as though demons were on his heels and barked instructions for the lobby as though that would make the lift go faster. He paced, thinking and not thinking, until the doors opened again and he ran for the street, not giving a fuck about appearances right now, with only one thing on his mind: he had to stop her.

It wasn’t until he was actually standing in the lobby of the police station, the usual busy clamour of the night shift in a crime-riddled city carrying on around him, that he realised where he was and what he was doing. he’d come here because she was going to kill the new fucking commissioner of police and Brett didn’t know where else to start. But that wasn’t the reality - the reality was that he, a man accused of the murder of a police officer, a murder for which they’d never been able to pin him for, was standing in the city’s main police station with what amounted to a written confession of the murder - or attempted murder - of another police officer.

The uselessness of it, the helplessness of his situation, all came crashing down. He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t stop this. She was making the biggest mistake of her life, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. The desk sergeant looked up, catching Brett’s eye and started to say something, but Brett shook his head, turning and walking back out into the darkness, fading into the street. He walked quickly back to his car and sat, the light from a streetlamp providing enough illumination for him to read the rest of the note, the ending of it all, read about the way she’d set him up, the sheer premeditation of it all. And with all that, he took in that she’d known. She’d known he’d hate this. She’d known he would never agree with it. And yet, she claimed to have done it for him. No - she’d never done this for him, she’d done it for her, only for her, and now she was assuaging her conscience towards him by giving him this, this letter that was far more of a confession than he’d first suspected.

He felt sick, sick because she really didn’t know what she’d done. Because it wasn’t there - the instinct to do the right thing. He knew, rationally, that the ‘right thing’ would be to do what she told him to. Give this letter, this confession, to the police. Turn in a self-confessed murderer, cop killer. The worst scum of the earth as far as people like he’d been were concerned.

But there it was - people like he’d been. Once, until not so long ago in fact - he’d thought that the man he’d been was dead. That whilst he, Brett Trent, lived on, the good man, the honest cop, had been killed, crushed by the events he’d been through, the grinding passage of life. And then he started to see a glimmer, the suggestion that that wasn’t the case. He’d started to rebuild himself, and she had been part of that. And now - nothing in life was cut and dried, and he couldn’t hand her in. He screwed the paper into a ball, throwing it into the passenger seat well as he slumped back in his seat. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t want to do it. Right now, he didn’t know if he could ever forgive her for what she’d said she’d done, but he couldn’t hand her in. The thought of what they’d do to her. The thought of her being locked away for the rest of her life, or worse - no. No matter what she did, he couldn’t do that to her. He wouldn’t do that.

But, that aside, he didn’t know what he would do either. She’d gone. She’d left him the business. That was a fucking joke. That proved it - that she never fucking listened to a fucking word he said. Because he didn’t want the fucking business and he had to have told her that a thousand damn times. He didn’t want to be there without her. As far as he was concerned, right now - the business could go to hell. It was over, it was ended, and Brett couldn’t even feel properly angry. He was too empty for that.