Thank you to Princess Rosalind of Underland and RhaenaTargaryen for reviewing the previous chapter! :)

Chapter as always beta'd by RhaenaTargaryen

I wasn't very happy with this chapter when I first published it years ago. But I've now edited it a bunch and had it beta'd too and I like it much better now. If you are here and you read this when it was on ao3 please let me know. It's kinda discouraging how silent it is on this site.

Jaime awoke to the sound of banging. He winced in pain, grabbing his head and closing his eyes. The banging continued and murmuring a few curse words he stood, finding himself face to face with the blinding sunlight shining through the inn's thin curtains. The banging continued and he headed to the source as Cersei finally stirred from her slumber.

He made his way to the door, his ankle paining him on the short walk. He definitely needed to see a maester as soon as they left the inn. His stomach growled, indicating other things were of more importance. He made his way to the door, grabbing the sword as he did so. If somehow it had been found out who they were he would not go down without a fight.

He opened the door to see a young woman who looked to be perhaps in her teens, standing in front of him. Being groggy and in pain from his ankle, as well as experiencing hunger pains, he just stared at her blankly. She fidgeted nervously before clearing her throat. She informed him that as it was now noon they needed to either go downstairs to pay for another day, or leave. In the background, he could hear Cersei protesting that they would leave when they were damned well ready and not before.

"If...if the two of you refuse to leave you will be removed by force and have your possessions confiscated," the girl informed him nervously.

"I would like to see you try," threatened Cersei.

"It would not be me who removes you."

"Who then, the owner?" Cersei smirked. The innkeeper had been a skinny, weak looking man.

"No. There is a man, Nakio who does it. He is about six and a half foot tall and a skilled fighter."

Jaime tried to ponder what to do. He knew Cersei didn't want to leave the inn in bright daylight looking as they did. He hadn't thought they would sleep so long. He'd thought they would wake up before the noon check-out time and have time to bathe with time to spare.

The girl sensed their discomfort and apologetically stated, "I'm very sorry, but these are the rules."

"Could you perhaps clean the other rooms first and come back to this one in an hour?" He asked.

"I...I really can't."

He made his way to the sack with their possessions and quickly retrieved half of their remaining coins and held them up for the maid to see. "Are you sure?"

The girl hesitated, eying the coins greedily. "I can come back to this room and clean it last. But if you two are still here when I return I will have to alert Nakio. I'm very sorry, but-"

Jaime interrupted her. "It is quite alright. We will be on our way in a short bit. Perhaps you could fetch us some water so that we may clean up first?" As he said this, he retrieved even more coins from their sack.

The girl looked at the money in awe, her face lighting up like Cersei's after torturing one of their enemies. "Of course, I'll be back in a short bit."

The girl left, shutting the door behind her. A long, uneasy silence filled the room. Jaime broke the silence first, "Well, it will certainly be nice to clean up some after so long."

"Ah, yes. A sponge bath. How wonderful," Cersei replied sarcastically.

He sat down on the bed next to her and sighed in frustration. "Well, I too would love a real bath but we should be grateful that she is allowing us time to do this."

"Only because you gave her a bunch of money!" she paused, then added, "I was going to wash up some on that monkey infested island, but I remembered that time when we were children and had wandered far from Casterly Rock, and I washed on the shores. Never again."

He remembered Cersei's and his very unpleasant experience with jellyfish. They had been around nine, and father had been away. In between lessons, they'd managed to sneak away. They'd enjoyed a day on the beach free of lessons, knowing that their septa would not speak a word of their escape, due to fear of being sent away if word of her ineptitude got out.

"That? I got stung more than you when I rescued you."

"Well, it was a most unpleasant experience for me and it was all your fault!"

"How was it my fault?"

"The waters here are no different than the ones closer to home. Come on Cersei, it will be fun," she sat up as she mimicked him.

"Well, you can hardly blame me. I couldn't have known. And you're the one who chose to swim off further away from me!"

"After I thought it was safe!"

He was going to say something back but just there was a knock. He opened it to see that the girl had returned with the bucket of water. She turned to address them. "I included some rags for you to wash with as well. I will be back in about an hour. Please be ready to leave then."

Once the girl left, Cersei looked in the bucket. The water looked pretty clean. She took out a rag. Those had clearly seen far better days. "How do we do this, exactly?" She asked.

"Well, obviously, we both take a rag and rub it on our skin to get the dirt off," replied Jaime. At that, he began to take off his clothes.

"That is not what I meant! Our clothes are even dirtier than we are. But if you clean them, will they dry in time?" she asked, avoiding looking at him, to his annoyance.

"Considering I never started a fire in the fireplace, no."

"You could start a fire," she suggested.

"There isn't time. Not if I'm to wash as well."

"So I should start one then?

"As I told you before, there isn't time. Now unless you'd like to go into town with sand and bugs in your hair, I would get cleaning."

"Bugs? Bugs?! There are bugs in my hair?! Get them out!"

He laughed. "I don't know if there are. It's certainly a possibility though. When B-"

"If you mention your whore right now so help me-"

"I don't recall mentioning you." The moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted them, but it was too late.

"I'm the whore? I fucked Euron to keep my kingdom! You ran off to the North to help our enemies because the women you were fucking wanted you to!"

"I hadn't done anything of the sort with Brienne at that point! And I wasn't even going to mention her. I was talking about Bronn. When we were...nevermind," The last thing either of them needed right now was to be reminded of their dead daughter.

Cersei ignored him, but as she got undressed she pondered what Jaime had said. Had he really not fucked Brienne before that point? She should have felt relieved, instead, it made her worry more. Jaime had apparently been faithful to her, until that time in the North. Was he now being faithful to Brienne? Was that why he hadn't so much as kissed her? Worse, was he planning to return to Brienne with their baby? She doubted Brienne could get pregnant, any woman that manly had to be barren.

She moved to a sitting position and tried to focus on the task at hand and force her thoughts off Jaime. She took the rag, squeezing water onto her hair. Sometimes she missed having long hair. Now was not one of those times. She worked the dried sand out of her hair, uttering a few curse words along the way. For the most part, she tried to avoid using such language. She considered such words to be more befitting of the lower class and overused by them. However, some situations called for such words. Right now, washing days of dried sand and dirt was one of them. The time she had told Septa Unella she fucked her brother had been another. She smirked at the remembrance. She wasn't certain which was her favorite memory of the tortured to death septa, that, or when Unella finally did her own confession, confessing that she enjoyed humiliating and degrading people, all under the guise of doing the work of the seven.

She scooted over some and positioned herself so that her back was towards Jaime, so that he wouldn't ask what she was smirking about. Having got much of the grime off her hair, she started scrubbing sweat and dirt off of her face.

Thoughts of the final year of her reign filled her mind as she scrubbed. The Septa hadn't been the only one she had punished for that walk. She'd made certain to punish the especially disrespectful members of the crowd from that terrible day. Well, the ones whose faces she could remember anyway. The women had given Unella a brief reprieve from Ser Gregor, and the men had become as she called it "Theonified". Revenge had been sweet and thinking back to those happy memories she nearly forgot where she was.

Soon, Jaime interrupted her vengeful thoughts. "This won't be so bad. We'll buy new clothes first thing when we get in town. I'm sure we can find a public privy to change in somewhere."

She craned her neck to look at him, forcing her eyes to remain on his face and not roam his naked body. Unlike her, he was standing, and facing her. Given their situation, and the topic at hand, she doubted desire would come anyway. A public privy? How could he suggest such a thing? And for changing of all things? For now, though, she supposed they had bigger concerns, "Do we even have enough money for that?"

"I think we should have enough to buy a change of clothes or two for us both, and a meal too, of course. But, it won't be long though before we need to sell one of the jewels. Have you decided which one you wish to part with first?"

She turned away from him and focused her attention on washing her arms as she answered, "I hadn't thought of it. I only know which one I don't wish to part with."

"The crown?" He asked.

"The crown? It is broken just like my rule has been, as though it is mocking me. Do you really think I would wish to keep a broken crown?" She asked, incredulously.

"I didn't think-"

"You don't think a lot of times. Certainly not while you were in the North!" she snapped. She continued to wash, moving on to her chest as she fought the urge to turn around and throw the dirty rag right in his face.

"And you thought too much. Too much about the crown and your rule. Look how well that worked out for you, you died!"

"So did you!" She yelled, scrubbing her skin raw with the rag.

"Because I came back for you!"

She scoffed, putting the rag on her lap as she glared back at him. "For me? Don't make me laugh."

"What did you think I came back for?"

'For the baby. Or perhaps it was a sense of duty,' she wanted to say but stopped herself. She wasn't going to let her insecurities show. She was a queen. Or so she had been. Nonetheless, she would never be a weak woman who begged for reassurance from her lover. As she neared finishing her washing, his words from moments ago came back to her. He may have apologized, but did he really think her a whore?

Jaime declined to reply to her, instead choosing to focus on the task at hand. Before their argument, he was going to ask if she needed help washing her back. Instead, he continued to wash, wondering when, or even if things would be back to normal between them. Not that he even knew what normal was anymore for them, or even for the world in general.

A part of him just wanted to take her in his arms, but he could not. He would not. Not with her being so unapologetic about all her wrongdoings. Euron fucking Greyjoy was one matter, the fact that she had fucking sent Bronn to kill him another. Did she want him dead still? Perhaps she wished that Euron had won the fight. Would she have smiled if Euron had come to her rescue, telling tales of the pathetic one-handed knight who had come back to her thinking she would ever again want anything to do with him?

Perhaps she would have kissed the disgusting pirate and thanked him for yet another job well done. Perhaps they would have even had a good ole laugh at all of his failures. Euron certainly had accomplished more than he had. At least in Cersei's eyes. He'd managed to not only bring Myrcella's killers to justice, but he'd killed one of the dragons as well. He burned with rage thinking about how thankful Cersei probably had been and just what things she might have done to show it. He wished with all his heart that he could go back to that fight and make Euron's death ten times more painful.

Finally, he finished bathing. He'd been in such a rage that his skin looked red and raw. He forced away thoughts of the past. They had things to do and these thoughts would not change anything. They'd discuss things once they were both well-fed, rested, and had gotten some much-needed supplies.

He examined his still bandaged foot. He could see the makeshift bandage had soaked through, but he had nothing clean to replace it with. At least the blood seemed dry, which meant at some point it had stopped bleeding. He cursed himself for not thinking to ask the girl for a bandage at some point.

Silence hung in the air as they put the dirty servant clothes back on for what would hopefully be the last time. He didn't feel anywhere near as clean as a Westeros bath would have afforded him, and he suspected the same was true for Cersei; but at least they wouldn't be embarrassed now. Well, not as embarrassed anyway.

"Let's leave before the servant girl comes back. We have a lot to do today. I cannot believe we both slept until nearly midday." he stated. Cersei had always been an early riser, and himself even more so. The day certainly wasn't off to a great start. Sleeping until nearly noon, having to venture into town looking like homeless people, and worst of all, Cersei unapologetic for her wrongs while berating him for all of his. This was definitely not how he had envisioned the first day of their new life starting.

Cersei said nothing but moved to grab the sack and followed him out of the room.

"I am starving," he said once they were finally downstairs. He hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon. They approached the innkeeper, and he inquired as to what foods were available to order.

"We don't serve food here."

"You...don't...serve...food?" asked Cersei slowly as though she were talking to a small child who had said something stupid.

"We're an inn only. We haven't space in the common area to fit tables and chairs."

"I don't suppose you could have your cooks make something regardless, we're very hungry," Jaime explained.

"Would if I could. Lunch has already been cooked and eaten. There is a tavern just a few steps away that serves a wide variety of food."

Jaime sighed, defeated, and turned to Cersei, "Come on. I am so hungry that I could eat a dog."

Cersei didn't even try to protest and demand the innkeeper serve her. He supposed she was surprised by the inn's proclamation that they didn't serve food. In Westeros, such a thing was virtually unheard of. But they were no longer in Westeros and things were clearly different here.

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