This chapter was written as part of the Facebook challenge "Sur Votre 31":
- Invite : ''Accept''.
- Number of words: From 100 to 1000 words.

This chapter is a bonus of my work Pray.

All the universe of Game of Thrones belongs to GRR Martin, DB & DW.

Enjoy reading !

It had been just over a year since they arrived in Pentos.

A year since they were free.

Free to be who they wanted to be, to be together, to be in love, to be happy.

It hadn't been easy at first.

It was never easy to forget.

To forget the Targaryens, the Starks, the fire, the ice.

To forget the Red Keep, King's Landing, Westeros, the Seven Kingdoms.

To forget everything that had happened.

Fortunately, they had their daughter.

Their daughter.

Jaime was now free to claim her as his, his and Cersei's, without fear of ever seeing their heads or their baby's on the end of a spike.

Their little Joanna.

She had been the light of their lives, a real ray of sunshine, with her golden curls, when the black shadows of the past had returned to haunt their present.

They had bought a house on the beach, with the jewels they had taken with them.

While they had initially feared that owning so many valuables would draw attention to them, the merchants had only seen the price they could get for these beautiful jewels.

And they had not paid attention to the emeralds and gold they had in front of them.

They had quickly become accustomed to their new life, even though Cersei sometimes looked at the sea without really seeing it, as she was doing at that very moment, imagining what would have happened if they had been trapped in the bowels of the Red Keep, the bowels of power, collapsing upon them.

Sometimes a tear would flow from her eyes, lonely.

Lonely, as Cersei had almost died if Jaime had not returned.

Her Jaime.

She had wondered all the way to the end if he would come back to her, or if he would let her perish alone.

She thought he would not. After all, she had threatened to kill him. Of course, she would never do it. Killing her twin, the love of her life after all she had lost, would have been the same as if she had killed herself.

Killing herself. She had often thought about that, too, since her marriage to Robert.

Wouldn't things have been simpler if she had thrown herself from the top of the Red Keep?

And she would have wanted so much, that everything would have been simpler. She would have wanted so badly never to become a queen.

If she had had the strength to stand up to her ambition and her father, she could have been happy long ago.

She could have run away here, to Essos, with Jaime. She could have married him, like she always wanted to.

If she had had the strength to do so, Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen would probably still be alive.

But she didn't have the strength.

She had always hated the fact that her father saw her as a mere commodity that he could sell to the highest bidder so much that she swore that she would never be the disappointing child. So she had listened to him.

She had done everything he had told her. And she had been unhappy.

The only happy moments in her life were with Jaime and her children.

And by the time all her little lion cubs had died and she felt Jaime was going to get further and further away from her, she realized she was pregnant.

That didn't stop her from pushing Jaime away when he wanted to fight for their lives, her and their baby.

And Jaime was gone.

But he had come back. For her, to save her, that day when Daenerys attacked King's Landing.

It was the most horrible day of her life when she thought she was going to die alone.

But it was also one of the most beautiful. Because Jaime had returned, as he had always promised.

Because Joanna had been born.

Because they had finally done what they should have done all those years ago.

Running away.

Together.

It was dark now. Cersei didn't know how long she'd been standing like that, with her feet in the sea.

It reminded her of Casterly Rock.

It reminded her of her childhood, this house she had never seen since she had been married, but where part of her had stayed.

Her innocence.

But that didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter now.

And it mattered even less now that Cersei felt a pair of arms wrapped around her waist, in a gesture as loving as it was protective.

Jaime buried her face in the hollow of her neck, and Cersei closed her eyes, enjoying the familiar warmth of his breath on her skin and the closeness of their bodies.

Now spending the day caring for Joanna, those moments had become rare, and they both enjoyed them when they came in.

But by this time, the little one was sound asleep, exhausted after spending the day running and playing.

After a moment that could have been seconds or years, Jaime whispered in Cersei's ear, as if on a whim :

"Marry me, Cersei...''

They had already talked about it, of course, many times, but they had never been able to make it come true.

In Westeros, they would have been executed for it.

In Essos, they were too afraid of being discovered.

''Jaime... you know I want to, but if we are recognized...''

Jaime cut her off:

''We don't have to do it in front of anyone. Let's do it right here, right now, just the two of us. We don't need a septon, or a septuary, or the light of the Seven. We just need each other. We always have. Please accept...''

Then Cersei nodded silently, smiling, feeling tears coming to her eyes, tears of joy.

They stood face to face, and Jaime undid his belt, then, grabbed Cersei's hand, and tied it around their wrists.

They looked into each other's eyes, a smile on their lips, and began to recite what they had never thought they could say again.

''I'm hers, she's mine, until the last of my days...''

Thank you for reading!
Please take the time to leave a little comment, it's always a pleasure ^^
Don't be too hard on English, it is not my mother tongue.