Across The Narrow Sea || Jaime & Cersei
@lannisqueen
The room glows golden in the early morning sunlight. There is still an hour or so to go before the world comes alive once more, but Jaime is content to lie there and hold his sleeping wife.
He presses a hand to the swell of her belly, waiting for the small flutter of movement that never ceases to take his very breath away. In her previous pregnancies, he has been nought but a bystander, forced to watch as another claimed the babes as his own. But this time was different.
He and Cersei no longer had to deny who fathered the babes in her belly.
They had arrived in Essos two moons ago, having fled from the ashes of King's Landing in the small boat Tyrion had promised. The journey had been a difficult one, but they had made it within a fortnight.
The first thing they had done had been to seek shelter. And, by the grace of the Gods, a landlady had seen them arrive and had run to them. Jaime had spun their tale that they were Joanna and Arthur, that they had fled King's Landing as the city had been ravaged by dragonfire, to save their babes. Cersei had learned in the moon before they fled that she carried twins in her belly.
The woman had instantly offered them lodgings, provided Jaime work for her in the tavern she owned. She had initially wished him to teach her son how to weild a sword, but he was quick to show her his stumped right arm- he had lost the golden hand somewhere in the fight to get his twin out of the castle.
He never wants to pick up a sword again.
His days now are long, but he is graced with two days each week to spend with Cersei. There is still a palpable tension between them, however. She has still not forgotten that he fled North, and he has still not forgotten that she sent Ser Bronn to kill him. But they speak of neither because right now, they need one another like air.
He notes a new facet of his twin, one of sadness. Her throne, one which she had sacrificed so much for, had been ripped from underneath her and the devastation within her was palpable. But their focus now was their babes.
As he strokes her belly, it brings a warm sense of comfort over him and he finds himself pressing delicate kisses to her forehead. Moving to her cheeks and eventually her lips.
Gods, how he loves her. And they are finally free to be in love. Outside these walls, they are Arthur and Joanna, about to have their first children. They look so unlike one another now, no one would suspect that they were twins.
This freedom is something they used to speak of when they were young and finally, they have it.
He settles his head back on the pillow then and draws her closer, the swell of belly pressing against his side as her head rests delicately on his bare chest. And soon, he finds himself drifting to that sweet realm of sleep once more.
