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Cersei clutched a glass of wine, a sight so familiar it seemed that the glass had become a permanent appendage. It had been nearly a week since Tommen had died. Her last boy, her baby, had thrown himself from his window. She stared out the window at the expanse of King’s Landing. At the rubble of the great sept. She broke herself away from the view, moving instead towards a tall mirror at the side of the room.
Cersei looked at herself in the mirror; her face, her body, the half empty glass in her hand. She studied the lines that creased her face, and the bitten, chapped skin of her lips. She looked at her hair. Oh, by the seven, her hair. She bit her tongue. Don’t cry. Don’t be weak. Despite herself, she felt her eyes begin to water; tears threatening to fall. She wanted to scream. Wanted to strangle one of the guards outside her door. Wanted to call Jaime into her chambers and make him fuck her until she forgot it all. Instead, she threw the glass into the mirror, watching as both shattered, and the shards fell to the ground. The remaining wine that was in the glass spilled over the mirror, almost resembling blood. She nearly collapsed to her knees, her hands pressed harshly into the ground. She grit her teeth. Somehow, her hands found their way into her hair. She tore at the short, uneven strands, what remained of the Lannister gold she possessed. She must’ve looked hysterical; rocking back and forth as she wailed, on the verge of pulling out all of her hair. She caught her lip in her teeth, biting so hard that it bled. As the coppery taste reached her tongue, she felt her breath hitch. Short gasps were all her quivering chest could take. Looking down, she realized that a shard of mirror was stuck in her knee. There were probably others, on her hands too. She could barely feel the pain. In a large shard lying on the floor, Cersei caught a glimpse of her face; stained with tears and a little bit of blood. She loosened her grip on her hair, managing to drop her hands to rest on her thighs. Her son had killed himself and what made her breakdown was her hair. She tried to pretend that it didn’t bother her. In reality, it did. It was a constant reminder of all she had lost. Of the humiliation she had been put through.
Cersei often felt as if she had been subject to humiliation her whole life. Forever cursed to love another that by the supposed law of the gods she was forbidden to love in such a way. The premise was nonsense to Cersei; she and Jaime were made for each other. They came into this world together, they belonged together. At nineteen, sold to a beast of a king. Sometimes it seemed as though no one could see Robert’s true nature but her. And Jaime. In true, the king was a whoring drunkard who was too stupid to be a good king. Her own husband pined for a corpse instead of her. Whispering her dreaded name into Cersei’s ear on their wedding night. Lyanna. Sometimes, when Cersei felt the most humiliated, the name would echo inside her head. The ghosts of Lyanna and Robert alike taunting her from the grave. After losing two of her darling children, she was imprisoned on the basis of religious morality and deprived of food and water. She was beaten, made to confess her sins. Cersei had little care for virtue. If loving Jaime was a sin, let her bathe in the flames of the seven hells. Cersei hated nothing more than being powerless. Even in the bedroom, when she let Jaime dominate her, it was of her own volition. As she walked naked surrounded by those who were supposed to be her people, having food, dirt, and shit thrown at her, being spat on and screamed at by peasants, hearing the shrill ring of the bell and that damned septa’s voice chanting shame, shame, shame, she felt humiliated. More than that, she felt angry, betrayed, stupid. No one understood that everything she did was for her house, her family, her children, Jaime. The queen the people saw was cruel, merciless, hateful. That last word seemed to consume her as time went by. Hateful. Why could no one in the world understand that she had reason to hate?
It reminded her of something Jaime had said in the Sept of Baelor. You’re a hateful woman. Why have the Gods made me love a hateful woman?
Jaime. Lips semi-parted, tongue behind the teeth. The J like Jaime himself was strong. Mouth opens wider, the sound softer than the J; less harsh. Everything always melted away after the J. Lips press together, similar to a sultry smirk she would often use on him. Mouth spreads into a smile, teeth on show. Jaime.
She’d heard people talk of soulmates before. One soul ripped into two, the halves forced to spend their lives searching for the one who can make them whole again. If that wasn’t a perfect definition of Cersei and Jaime, she wasn’t quite sure what else a soulmate could be. They were made for each other; she was sure of it.
She didn’t know the answer to his question. It had probably been rhetorical anyways. Hateful. That word on his lips echoed in her head. It had always been there, since she was a child, this hate. As time went on, it kept being fuelled. By Tyrion, by Robert, by Ned Stark, by the High Sparrow. She realized what was happening to her. The fire was growing out of control. It was all moving so fast; too fast, and not even she could stop it. Everything was turning to ash and slipping through her fingers. Joffrey, Myrcella, Tommen. Her father.
She picked up a mirror shard from the ground. She could end it if she wanted to, she thought, watching the piece glimmer in her hand. She thought about Jaime finding her body; collapsed in a pile of broken glass. How he would hold her corpse in his arms, sobbing. Maybe he would end it all too, once he saw that she was dead. She had always imagined that they would die together, just as they had been born.
She had said something to Tyrion once. If it weren't for my children, I'd have thrown myself from the highest window of the Red Keep. All her children were gone now, what more did she have to lose? But that wasn’t true. She didn’t know for certain yet, but something- something separate to Jaime was keeping her alive. And this new life, made her drop the sharp piece of mirror.
She stood up from where she knelt on the ground, tried to brush off the little shards of glass. She needed to be alive. No matter what she had become. She couldn’t die yet. For Jaime, for their unborn child. She needed to continue being ruthless, being hateful. Because that, she knew, was the only way to stay alive. She was Cersei of the House Lannister, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms. And hair grows back.