TW: Rape, Mental Illness, Cersei

Cersei stood overlooking Blackwater Bay, the Golden Company in her sights. Euron Greyjoy had fulfilled his promise. His dedication was a means to an end for her, no more. If he meant to crawl between her legs for his troubles, so be it. She put her hand to her flat stomach, imagining, wishing that she could feel a babe grow there.

She'd convinced Jaime that she was with child for a time, a ruse to keep her twin coming back to her bed to satisfy her as she prayed to any of the gods she'd not fallen afoul of that he would put another Lannister in her. Not that there were any gods left for her. And not that she was ever satisfied.

Jaime hadn't managed to satisfy her in ages. Not since before he'd gone to war with their father and gotten captured by the Starks. He was gone for 2 years then, and she'd made do with his absence by bringing others into her bed – younger, more supple specimens with whom she could do as she wished.

When Jaime finally returned to her, he had lost a hand and gained a lurching she-beast – two things that made her unwilling to entertain the idea of touching him. So long as the great blonde cow was about, Jaime had been positively distracted. He'd thought she didn't know, but Cersei had her spies everywhere, and she knew everything that happened in the city – and most things that happened outside of it.

She'd known, for instance, that her darling brother had betrayed her trust multiple times – with their younger brother and others – but she always made a show of bringing him back to her heart, even while ensuring that he was surrounded by those dedicated to her. She had him well-trained to beg forgiveness.

She'd known that Jaime was training his left arm for the sword with one of their baby brother's hangers-on - a man who, it turned out, was easy to flip with promises of wealth. And she'd known that Jaime would often take to the gardens with the giant tart in the evenings following his sparring practices, ushering her into the corners where he must have thought they wouldn't be heard sparring verbally, laughing with one another.

She also knew that Jaime had commissioned a set of armor not for him, not for any man, shortly before the flaxen ogress had vanished from the capital. What she had not known until recently, however, was that in addition to the armor, he'd given the harlot his sword. A Lannister sword made of Valyrian steel which their father'd had made. Upon Joffrey's death, Jaime had worn her son's sword – a wedding gift – out of respect to the fallen king. She'd never thought to ask what might have happened to the other – the one with the brilliant golden lion pommel set with family rubies. With Jaime carrying the other, she'd assumed that the larger sword – likely too unwieldly for his inferior left hand – was mounted somewhere in the White Sword Tower among the other Kingsguard relics.

But then she saw it. Not three months ago, she saw the sword on the hip of that cretinous bitch at the dragon pit. Distracted by the sight of the brother that had murdered their father, Cersei hadn't noticed the woman on the way to her dais. But when she'd turned around to sit, she couldn't have missed her staring at Jaime, the long-forgotten lion pommel clutched in her hand.

As far as she'd known prior to that, the two had not set eyes on each other in nearly four years, though their silent communications across the pit and their familiarity on their departure belied that in her estimation. On the day Jaime had fled for Winterfell she'd had his steward captured while trying to leave the capital, and Qyburn had tortured some fascinating tidbits out of the man before he'd succumbed to his wounds.

So she now knew that not only had her brother given the beast his sword, but he'd also seen her as recently as a year and a half ago, and in fact it had been she who had convinced Jaime to spare the lives of the Tully men at Riverrun rather than destroying every last one of them as Cersei had insisted. And then adding insult to injury, the man Daven had suggested that the only reason Jaime had come back to her bed in recent months had been his grief in thinking that the tawny troll had died in the north. If the steward hadn't perished shortly after that, Cersei might have marched down to the dungeons and slit his throat herself. As it was, she had her Lannister men who'd been at Riverrun - the ones who'd failed to communicate Brienne of Tarth's movements there with her brother - summarily executes.

Jaime fleeing north had been a blessing for Cersei. She was now free to hate him for his actions rather than pretending to need him despite them. If he wanted to run off and chase that mangy creature into the woods and then get killed by dead men, so be it. So long as he died, the rest didn't matter. She would find someone else – someone more powerful than her weak brother – to sire the king she would bring into the world.

Cersei smirked as the wind carried the ocean air and pungent jasmine up over the battlements. Her army and fleet were here, and she and her child to come would be well-protected in the war, be it with dragons or dead men.

On hearing the shuffling steps behind her, Cersei half-turned back toward the keep and saw Qyburn, Hand to the Queen, making his way toward her, his hands sunken into his robes and looking troubled.

"Your grace," Qyburn hesitated.

"What news?" she asked cooly.

"There were two ravens today." He pulled a scroll from his sleeve. "One must have gotten lost for the second made the first unnecessary."

"Go on."

"Your grace, the dead breached the wall at Eastwatch by the Sea-"

"Good," said Cersei with finality. "They will crush the north, crush all our enemies including my traitorous brothers, and then our armies will stop them at the gates. Thank you, Lord Hand."

"I'm afraid that's not all, your grace." Qyburn pocketed the first scroll and pulled out the second. "That raven must have been lost in winter fog. It's the news from the second that will be most…informative."

"News of Winterfell?"

"Aye. It seems they were successful in stopping the dead, your grace."

"Were they?"

"They lost approximately half of their forces in the battle. But the dead no longer march. No information yet on when the Dragon Queen intends to make her move."

"We'll be ready when she does. Was there any other news – of my brothers, perhaps?"

"Nothing from Ser Bronn yet as to his success, your grace, but there was a mention of one of your brothers with this raven, though I'm not sure—"

"-Spit it out."

Qyburn took a breath. "According to our spies in the north, the Maid of Tarth is a maid no more. She and Ser Jaime are lovers...your grace."

Cersei stilled. "So he went and fucked the bitch", she marveled. And if Ser Bronn was unsuccessful in his mission, which she doubted but it was a possibility, then one if not both of her treacherous brothers could be marching on King's Landing in a matter of weeks. "He was supposed to die, not domesticate himself with that freckled tree of a woman."

She blew steaming breaths from her nose as she raged in the sunset, but the heat of her anger was quickly overpowered by a cold calm that sank into her body.

She would enjoy watching the Mountain tear Jaime's whore apart slowly, preferably making use of the sword she carried and had no right to wield. Perhaps she would command him to fuck her with it. Jaime would enjoy watching it less than she of course, but she'd be there to make sure he did watch. And then she would bathe him in the dead slut's blood before letting him finally put another Lannister cub in her belly.

She patted her stomach wistfully. "Soon, my love," she muttered, "soon."

That's you and me.

A/N: I do not own Game of Throne or these characters; some dialogue may be taken verbatim from HBO's Game of Thrones or George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Lyrics used are directly from "You and Me" by Alecia Moore and Dallas Green (C) 2014

So we come to the end of another book. To my dear and loyal readers, thank you from the bottom of my heart for sticking through this.

I always knew that the end of book 3 would be what wound up being Ch 34, followed by a scene like this one that literally makes me want to vomit, but which was always going to be necessary, regardless of whether the story remained canon compliant or not. Chapter 34 (You Are Mine) is the first thing that I wrote when crafting this series - it was one of the first things I've ever written fanfic-wise, and it was incredibly important to me that the way these characters intertwined made sense going into the morning after, and that their stakes were high enough for them personally to merit Cersei's reaction.

Up until a month ago, I had never written anything like this. But these characters sing to me in a way that I cannot deny them, which is why you're all getting this story. To those of you who've reached out personally via messages, thank you for your encouragement and support.

I know that I probably need a break from this. I've been writing this story for a month straight now, and my sleep is suffering for it. I blame the Jaime in my head - the one in this story - for being constantly in my ear talking about how dedicated he is to Brienne. The idiot does not shut up.

I'd like to say that I'm going to take the break I need before Book 4 begins. But I'm making no promises to myself. I'm going to be wading into uncharted territory as this thing starts to veer away from canon (because yeah, it's going there, guys, you're welcome) and I don't know that I'm as creative as I need to be to get that moving, so there may be some slowness, but I promise to bring this thing to a conclusion that is neither exactly canon, nor tedious (I hope).

Most importantly, I promise to continue to try and do justice to Brienne, who deserves the world. xoxo