Three Queens

There was a dimming glow that flickered through the bedchamber covered in crimson and gold drapes and beautifully crafted furniture. Some might have said that the whole room was too decorated, too opulent, too lavish, too much. It was the previous owner's interpretation of what a high born woman's chamber should be. The illusion of power within coin, the way of life new and foreign played by ear to an overnight success. The truth of the matter was that the transfer of wealth, of inheritance of great importance was through dowry. They were grand things, items, and keepsakes, passed down through generations. That was the way the high born lived. The lavish set-up was much grander than anything that even some of the great-Lords of Westeros had. It was an odd study in what the common people thought of those of a higher class and what their lives must be like. If they only knew that most high born people drank their wines from worn down cups that were crafted over hundreds of years ago and passed down through the ages. The nobility invested in the prestige of an item rather than the price or the opulence of it. It helped them sleep at night, helped them ignore the fact that there were hundreds of merchants across the sea whose shit was worth more than their very castles.

Either way, stepping through the chamber door was somehow like being in a fairytale. Everything was soft and silky, the scent of sweet perfumes and creams on the polished vanity whiffed perfectly through the air. The candle light made everything alluring, mystical, mysterious, and wondrous. It was a complete idealization of some great storybook tale of what every child imagined a princess's room looked like. A rough, salty, hand ran down one of the polished bedposts as boots scraped on the stone floor. It was like walking into a dream. The surroundings were familiar, the smells haunting him, the tactile touch of the soft things electrifying his nerves. He had been here before, been in the presence of this kind of atmosphere. He knew where everything was and what everything was. He knew how she made up her face, the creams she lathered onto her soft skin, and dabbed the scents on her wrists. This was where she waited … waited for him.

It just wasn't Jon Snow she was waiting for.

An odd feeling surrounded the young man. Ancient, foreign, emotions swirled around him as it surrounded this place. The familiarity with it was just about driving him mad. There was sorrow here, longing, heartache, and love … so much love. But he couldn't place the context of these emotions. Jon could not allow them to rule him when he had no conscious knowledge of why this place, this moment, was so familiar to him. Suddenly the door to the room opened. His muscles coiled like a spring, ready to be unleashed in whatever motion necessary. These strange feelings and powerful attachments had put him on edge, his chest thumping hard in anxiety. And when he saw emerald eyes, he saw the same senses, the same emotions on the beautiful face that swept into the room.

The Queen was quick to shut the door with a hard clank. By the looks of her and her actions, Jon was sure that the woman was hiding some great secret or treasure on her person. She rushed into the room and quickly closed the door as if the hounds of all Seven Hells were on her smooth heels. There was suspicion on the Lord Commander's face as he watched the beautiful woman in her silken nightgown bolt her door as a banker locked up the vault at the end of the night. He watched her place her ear to the iron wood, listening to the nonexistent foot traffic of the lonely wing. It would be awkward, if not strange, for her not to notice being followed as Cersei Lannister occupied an entire wing of the manor just for herself. A part of Jon wanted to know what she was guarding so fiercely, hiding so carefully that no one must know.

But he got his answer when she glanced up.

Heaves of relief came slowly from the Queen's lovely bosom as she leaned heavy against her door. The iron was freezing against her fevered forehead. But slowly her eyes opened and fell over Jon who stood stiffly on her rug. His dark, familiar eyes watched her in the same way as another who once came to her door on a similar night many years before. Jon noticed that there was a glimmer there, a wash of emotions that ran core deep. It was one of the few rare moments in life in which one saw the very soul of a person in a simple glance.

For the first time in so many years, Jon Snow was alone with Cersei Lannister in a room. There was no one there to listen to them talk, no one there to keep them apart, and no one there to segregate their loyalties. They stood before one another as their gods and life had made them. And there was something about this realization, this very moment, which nearly brought Cersei to tears.

Pearly crooked teeth were visible as the fierce creature hissed in aggression quietly. Her throat was tight, her hands balled into fists. A glare ever rested on her beautiful face as her hardened eyes of so much pain and anger glassed over. Sudden, powerful emotions were ripping through her very soul, tightening her slender frame like the drawing back of a bow string. For a moment it looked as if the queen would shout for Jon to get out, then the next she'd be begging him to never leave her sight. But at all times it was as if she wanted to tear the young man apart from how much she wanted to just wrap herself in his very presence after so long.

He flinched defensively in a fighter's pose as the queen took a step forward toward him. Jon had been quite sure she was going to strike him by her posture. But instead she leaned forward and grabbed the lapels of Jon's black and crimson lined duster. Her hands were shaking as she balled the beaten leather in vice. The Queen was a violent woman, filled with so much aggression and passion for people and things. If the emotion was love or hatred, her flame ever was the color green and could not be dowsed by water. She looked as if she might explode, her frame trembling, as she rocked Jon back and forth with a shake. Teeth chattered as she exhaled a minty breath and looked into her champion's eyes. There was something she wanted to say, something she wanted to do. But Cersei found no words for the Lord Commander. She had nothing to say, all she had was feelings, thousands of emotions that could not be said, could not be expressed, and could not be shown.

All the woman knew how to do was shake the young man that was breaking her with every breath he took and every second he looked into her eyes.

Jon was quiet, motionless, and in shock. No one … no one in his entire life had looked at him this way. When he walked into a room, just being in his gaze, no woman or man alive had ever shown so much emotion for his presence. He didn't know how to feel, he didn't know what to do with himself. All he knew was that he was here, at the end of the long and terrible nightmare that began what seemed like a lifetime ago. All he knew was that he was at the end of the road and he was presented with his prize. But now that he was here, he didn't know what to do. What was proper? What was the right thing to do? … what was the wrong thing to do? All this time he had journeyed from a great ice wall, a trial, a massacre at an Inn, under the legs of a great Titan, and to the tourney fields of a coliseum built in the image of the sinful pride of a scorned King. He had done all of it for her, and now that she stood before him, he didn't know … anything. The memories weakened him, Ygritte's voice, Edd's jokes, Grenn's smile, Pyp's singing. They were all gone now. Only he, Sam, and Tommen remained. Jon, who started this journey, was the only one left standing at the end. And he didn't know if it was worth it.

Many times when he took into account what was missing every day, he brooded over if he had gotten them killed over nothing, over a few words scribbled by an evil queen who haunted his dreams every night. But standing here now, he hadn't expected this. How little he'd know of the feeling of her glance upon him? What deep and moving emotions in him from just being in her very shadow? What his very presence had awoken in her? He was filled with remorse and guilt, not because he had failed, but because it was excruciatingly joyous to be standing in the grip of the most beautiful woman in the world. And to know that her love, not just any love, but love greater than any man in her life had ever known was all for him. All the longing, praying, sorrow, and joy, she had saved it all for Jon. He had traded his honor and his life for a losing cause, for the wrong side of justice, and he had always been ready to be punished for it. But this was not a punishment. This was not the cold shoulder, the rug being pulled from under him he had been waiting for. This was not what Tyrion had been warning him was coming. In the absence of any of these soul stealing revelations, in the whirlwind of this bliss, he felt the crushing guilt of all the yesterdays. He couldn't find the happiness in this little corner of the world in which he was wanted beyond a sword arm and a mind for combat.

Jon Snow didn't know how to be happy.

"This was your fault, Bastard … remember that! This … is your … fault!"

The sputtered rage on the dying breath of a pale and naked woman with blood red auburn hair, lying in his cradled arms, was cut short. A hand rested on his cheek. He looked down to find the fierce and violent creature of so many evil and dark stories with nothing but love and understanding etched into wet emerald stained glass. Her warm and soft hands framed his hard and rugged face. He didn't know if this was a trick, if this was something he was not seeing. He pondered if somewhere he was still lying in the cold mud of the tourney field. But what the young man did know was that he couldn't hold out any longer. In the Queen's hands and in her loving gaze, he was the same sulking and lonely little child sitting in his room. A boy thinking of a woman who was thousands of miles away, or maybe just in view of Winterfell's walls, only knowing that he needed her.

He bowed his head down to touch her forehead to his. The woman closed her eyes for the softest of moments, her hands cupping his ears as she drew him closer. There was no escaping the things he had done. There was no way to justify the countless lives that had been lost to achieve this one goal. Now all he wanted was it to be okay, for all of it to go away for just one moment. She gave quick and loving pecks of her lips on his cheek and forehead, throwing her arms around his neck. Effortlessly, he wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her off her feet as his grief and self-loathing swallowed her whole. Burying his face into the crook of the woman's neck, he could smell the heavenly scent of her long perfect golden tresses. He could almost taste the supple skin of her pale neck. He wanted to be consumed by it, by her, to forget everything and everyone that had ever existed in this terrible life till this moment.

Cersei's grip on Jon was tight and overpowering. She didn't have a memory of first steps, first words, first time he sat astride a horse. The Queen had nothing of the boy's that was her own, nothing but the emptiness of the long years of an empty place within her heart. All she knew was that the man she loved had taken something precious of hers, and she wanted it back. It was all she thought about, all she dreamed about. All she knew was that she wanted him, wanted Jon. Cersei had wanted the boy more than she had wanted anything in her entire life. With all the money, all the power of seven kingdoms at her disposal, and the one thing she had always wanted, needed, fate had made unreachable, untouchable to her. Now that he was here, in her arms, in her protection, nothing could ever harm him again. No one could ever take him from her. The sobs that escaped her throat were angrily shrill and selfish. She nuzzled the side of her face against his, against his neck, his hair, his shoulder, anywhere and everywhere. The bottled and useless emotions since the day her baby had been taken from her came flooding through her like a broken dam or breached wall.

Jon ran his hand down the back of Cersei's neck, feeling the luxuriousness of the supple meeting of gold hair and milky skin. His nose running down her neck, lost in her fragrance, in her warmth, in the sheer unbridled love. He never wanted to leave this moment. She snarled into his ear, nuzzling it. There was something primal and animalistic about it. There was intuition in the knowledge that many an awful and terrible thing could be bred and plotted within these potent emotions. The Queen was almost frightening in her loss of sanctity and reason in the powerful surge of protectiveness and possession of the young man she held so tightly. It brought a cold shiver down his spine. It took him out of the moment he had been longing for all of his life. He opened his eyes as the feeling of silk covering the beautiful queen's flesh felt different.

In the mirror he looked too, the ruby eyes of the silver dragon frame stared right back at him. The woman in his arms was beautiful beyond comprehension, but not Cersei Lannister. She wore see-through fabric spun in Qarth, silver bracelets on her milky arm. She had beautiful, perfect, silver hair. She was not a queen, but a princess that lived long ago, kept by a high holy man. Her beauty was an affront to the gods; a beauty the priest touched in temptation again and again and found the carnal sin in the girl and not herself. The girl was told that she existed for no other reason but to breed evil in people. That anyone who loved her was only bewitched by her sinful existence. Jon Snow knew this, because he was not the one holding the silver haired goddess … it was a suit of demon armor who was staring right back at him. The room, the manor, the things on the vanity, it was all the same as it was before. He knew this place, these feelings, this moment, because it was gonna happen again.

This was how it always ended.

Jon made a startled gasp in fear at the surroundings and the sudden violent impulses. He pushed away from the girl in his arms. He shut his eyes and breathed hard. His heart was pounding, his blood thundering through his veins. He was in a room of dozens, hundreds. All of them chanting, gnashing their teeth, demanding in a deafening roar for violence, for blood. He came to realize that these voices, these dark beings, they weren't demons. They were the former fools, they were him. Every lover, every hero who thought he could make a pact with evil, who could control the beast. Each man, one by one, fell to the darkness. Their imprints, their essence, trapped within the armor. They were forever the echoes of the blood thirsty monsters the armor had turned them into.

A hand brushed Jon's cheek. He grabbed it quickly, defensively. His eyes snapped open, amongst the assailing roar of the crowd, and found golden hair and a look of confusion on a beautiful woman's face. They were alone in the nearly dark room again. It was the same room as before. But in the mirror he found only himself and the lovely silk and slender figure of the queen's back. With a frightened sensitivity, he let go of the queen's hand and let out an anxious breath. He was trembling as the tragedy of antiquity, the mistakes of the past, and the unknown of the future swirled around him in the coming moment of truth.

Suddenly an aggressive grip grabbed the young man by the base of the neck and forced him forward. Queen Cersei was fierce and formidable in her worried state. She looked ready for war, war on behalf of the youth in front of her. She pulled him closer, searching his eyes with a deep and suspecting glare. The whispers around them could be heard in the flicker of shadows as the silhouette of snow flurries began to cross their figures in the dark. She was quiet for a long moment as if she could hear the voices. Then, with a snarl, she brought Jon close and gave him a shake.

"This is not the way!" She hissed.

Jon's hardened eyes were made of stone. "It was the only way …" He said with resignation.

"It's not … it can't be." Cersei shook her head in confusion. Tears of regret and guilt fell gently on her smooth cheeks. "How far will you take this … this thing you've done to yourself?" Her voice cracked under such a burden of heart broken concern.

"As far as it takes." He didn't flinch from her primal gaze.

"Why?!" She begged angrily, shaking her head in tears.

"To save you."

All the things done and said about love, wasn't comparable to the way Cersei felt. The young man that stood before her was tormented and rugged beyond his years. She saw it in his eyes, in his face, and felt it in his touch. Jon had been exposed to true evil and was being consumed by it. There were many men on this earth, and many more women, who would make communion with such a thing to get what they want. Even Cersei would taste its seed if meant destroying all her enemies, all the people who mock her, who disrespected and demeaned her. But it seemed unheard of that someone would expose themselves to this level of darkness, to the blackest of magic, but not for their own ends, but to save another. If it had been anyone else, she might have been able to live with that, might have come to some kind of arrangement with her conscious. But it wasn't some stranger after her naked beauty, after her gold, her favor. It was Jon. It was her own precious creation. It was a man who did not know her, did not spend but a few moments in her company. And yet he had given everything he ever had and will have just to save her.

It was a kind of selfless love that Cersei Lannister did not know, could not understand. She had not known anyone in her life who would ever do such a thing for her. Jaime would do anything for her, but Jaime was not a stranger, he would never be a stranger, he was her and she was him. It was not love, it was simply who they were. Her father would let her rot in a dungeon for disgracing the Lannister name, and Tyrion would be the one to pick her cell. Even Eddard had his limits when he found what Jon had done for her. All of Cersei's children were small. Her beautiful little golden haired prince and princess's acts of selflessness for their mother was Tommen picking her a flower, and Myrcella washing her back while they bathed. And Joffery … Joffery was always hers to protect, he was special. He did nothing for her, and she was content to do everything for him. But Jon, Jon was not a child, he was not her brother, he was a child of a girl who died at the Heart Tree of the Godswood too long ago. And she didn't know how to respond to that kind of love, that powerful feeling that came so natural. She knew what she was prepared to do for all of her children, but never once did she ever think that anyone would be prepared to do the same for her. She was convinced that she was not worthy of it. For the first time, Cersei saw herself as Jon saw her. But she was ill-equipped to understand it, uneducated in the ways of those feelings.

It started as it did previously. Jon saw what he had always wanted in the woman's eyes, in her expression. He pulled her back to him. He kissed her cheek and she kissed him as he hugged her as tight as possible. It was addictive, the feeling of being wanted, of being loved. A man could do just about anything to feel this way. Cersei cupped Jon's face in his embrace and pelted it with kisses. But then she stopped. Jon was drawn to her in the abrupt halt of affection. There was something venerable, sacred, in the way that she was looking at him. A damaged soul, filled with so much sin, trying to find a worthy way to repay an act of immaculate love. There might have been a thousand ways that a normal person would have found the solution. But after forty years of abuse, denigration, and heartache, Cersei Lannister only knew of one. It was the only way she knew how to justify, to legitimize, this great gesture given to her.

It was the only thing that anyone had ever used her for, the only thing they said she was good for.

There was something unreadable about her face, about their shared look, when the queen shed her nightgown, letting it pool at her feet. She retreated back into arm's length and let the glow of the dim light shimmer off her naked body. She was slender, perfect, and beyond any man's imagination of what her beauty was. She waited for Jon to say something. She longed to see his face. But it was completely covered in shadow, his features in complete darkness. Most men would've been on her in a moment, would want to touch her, feel the silken creamy skin of her body. It was all she had to offer him, all she had to offer anyone. If this was his last night, if he would fall tomorrow, he would not know anything but joy, of pleasure, of love. Whatever he desired, whatever he needed, wanted, he could take from her.

Suddenly, she was surprised when Jon slipped away. Turning, he took two steps in the opposite direction of her. No one had ever rejected Cersei before. Not even sober did Robert refuse his beautiful queen, perfect, beautiful, and naked before him. But Jon was trembling as he turned his back on her. She saw his hand tremor, his body tight with emotions. There was a moment in which the queen looked down at herself, and pondered for the first time in her life if she had made a terrible mistake. This was not the way to greet her child. This was an awful affront to everything that had ever been taught to man.

But the true torment of the moment was that Cersei Lannister didn't know any other way.

"My love …" She whispered padding to him. "It's fine." Her words were softly shaken, smiling uneasily. She took his arm in her grip, pressing herself into his shoulder, looping herself around him. She could not see the Lord Commander's face. But his chest was heaving, his body trembling, and there was great emotion over him. No one had ever reacted to her the way Jon had. It was growing the doubt in her mind that this was not the right thing to do. "Come …" She whispered in his ear. "Come to bed." She nuzzled his ear from behind. "Take me to bed. Love me." She said with a nod. "Love me …" She enticed with an emotional whisper.

"You don't know the meaning."

He could've caught her in the belly with a fist, and she'd not be half surprised as the cold hatred in his voice. There was a momentary display of shock on her face, before a deep seated glare came over her. His words more than just stung, it tore her apart, and it broke her into little pieces. All of her life her nakedness, her beauty, it had been all she had. Every man, any man, from her brother, to her uncles, cousins, to every lord, knight, and common man, they had all coveted her, dreamt of her this way. It gave her great pride. It was the only pride she had that was hers alone. But for the first time in her life standing naked in front of a man she loved, she was ashamed of the one thing she had pride in. It wasn't many men who knew this sight, who had the privilege of being inside of her. She couldn't understand the cold reception, the angry rebuff.

She couldn't understand that someone loved her for something other than her beauty and gold.

"But … I love you!" She said in confused anger. Tears shimmered on her cheeks and her teeth clenched.

The three words that escaped from Cersei in a moment of pain and confusion set off a flashpoint in the shadowed man. He moved swiftly from her grip and snatched her vanity chair. The Queen was startled when it smashed against her door. There was rage in the way the Lord Commander had thrown the item. The crash echoed violently through the room and down the corridors. When he turned on the queen there was a seething hatred that was as black as his colors. On the far wall, a suit of demon armor was shown where a man's shadow should've been.

This was how it always ended.

Violently Jon grabbed the woman by the arm and brought her close. "My friends are dead, men, good men, who were there for me on the edge of the world when no one else was! Ser Rodrik, the man who first put steel in my hands, is dead! Ygritte … my wife, a girl who saved my life, and the gods know that I didn't give her a reason, she's dead! They're dead because of me, because I read your letter, and I came for you when they all told me I shouldn't! Lady Stark is dead, because I read your letter, and I came! There are dead men from the Riverlands, to Duskendale, to Bravos, to Blackwater fucking Bay! Men I killed, because I read your letter, and I came! You think that I did this, lost everyone I cared about, KILLED all of those men … for this?!" He raged. Jon gave her a violent shake, her bare breasts and thick rosy nipples jiggling somehow added to his point. "You think I've gone through all of this, just to fuck you? I've traded my honor, the lives of my friends, the life of a dragon queen half a world away, so I could have a night with Queen Cersei Lannister?!" He roared in the woman's face.

Cersei was in shock, she had never seen anyone so angry, so filled with darkness. Robert's tantrums were blustery, bullying, and blunt like his hammer. But this was different. There was something dark and hateful in the way Jon looked at her. It was the corrosion of love, the rotting of a heart and the decay poisoning the rest of a man's soul. This was what the ugly mess of a dead love, of a moment of regret looked like after hundreds of years of an unbreakable circle. The pain of a tragedy hundreds of years old and the heart break of the defiling of the only love that Jon Snow had left to him was married in one moment of time.

It was a curse on a suit of evil armor that would replay itself over and over again.

Somewhere on the waters of Bravos, centuries before, a hero made a pact with a shadow binder for the darkness that would be the death of an entire civilization one day. In the garb of everything that this evil holy man prayed against, he stormed the palace to save his secret lover. They were supposed to have run away together. Met at the certain time and place in front of the House of Black and White, a place no one dare to come for them. But when she never showed up, he turned to the darker impulses that led him to his shadow binder, to the armor, to this moment.

The silver haired princess's cheeks were wet with tears and blood. She was thrown onto a bed of crimson silk. She was naked and frightened. Dead men were around her, men hired to defend her, to keep her imprisoned. The anger, the rage was too much to control in the hero. He grabbed the girl who was desperately crawling away by a slender thigh. A trail of blood gushed from the gruesome cuts of the armored talons that dragged her back to him. He ripped her on her back, forcing her to look at the The Sealord and his Water Dancers that had come, offering her a fortune. It was why she was late, why she never came to the House of Black and White. When he found her she was wearing a whores dress. He didn't even stay his madness to hear what she had to say, a good man offering her and her lover money to escape. But in his rage, in his selfish delusions, he had killed that man. He had killed the Sealord, the maid who was the princess's only friend, the cook who called her darling, the butler who thought of her as a daughter. He had murdered everyone she ever knew, everyone she ever loved that was not him. And then he came for her.

"I'm going to gut you from cunt to tits, Whore!"

The point of the Valyrian blade glinted in the candlelight. A hand squeezed a pale neck, pinning her to the mattress as the point of the sword rested only inches in the depression between her two breasts. The man's eyes were golden and his pupils slit like a wild animals. The hero had loved her, loved her more than he had loved anything else in the entire world. There was nothing he wouldn't have done for her; nowhere could they've taken her that he would not have followed. He had come to save her, and she had betrayed him. It was impossible for her to understand what he had given up for her, what he had done to keep her safe, to get her away from imprisonment. But she threw all of out like bathwater, and for that he could never forgive her. She was like a virus, her memory, her love, it was like a part of him was shutting down. It was like dying a cruel, slow death. He was a hunted animal lying by a spring, felled by the arrow of a hunter who gave up the chase. The only answer was to cut her out completely, to end her very existence.

It was the only way to make the pain stop.

"This was your fault bastard … remember that! This … is your fault!"

The scratchy voice of a handsome woman echoed to the hero's mind. She was the author of so much sadness, so many unpleasant days and nights. They were the blue eyes of scorn and jealousy of another woman, of a love that she never knew from a man she wished to have all of. In her dying breath she had made sure he'd never forget what he never had. He'd remember what he sacrificed for the one thing he'd never know, that she had denied him. Catelyn Tully had the voice against the crowd, a hundred monsters. They were the fleas in the coat of the beast. All of them lived in the memory of all the women they had failed, all the great loves that the curse had consumed. Forever to be trapped in this moment of time when their anger, their rage, had ended the life of the woman they loved.

"Remember bastard …"

"Harder!"

"This was your fault …"

"Harder!"

Remember that …"

"HARDER!"

"Bastard!"

The roar of the crowd, the death rattle of a woman, the silver haired princess, and the scorned hero, it was all quieted. In the vicious noise, guilt, anger, and sorrow of all that was betrayed … he remembered. It wasn't for a love a princess, for a wildling girl, or a dragon queen that he saw only in his dreams. They were not why he was here. It was a different kind of love that had driven him. It was the kind of love he had only a taste of. It was the kind of love that was in the sad, resign eyes of the woman on the mattress. Beautiful, frightened, naked, and teary eyed, she lay under the man, whose blade was pointed at her breast, his iron grip around her pale throat. He remembered all the faces and the names of all the people that were not here, and in their loss, he remembered who he was. In the eyes of the woman under him, in her touch, in the one perfect second when they were reunited, he remembered why he had done all of this. Behind him, the shadow of the armor disappeared, the voices stopped, and they never returned.

The circle was broken.

Slowly and tiredly, Jon Snow lifted the point of his blade from Cersei's breast. He unhanded her throat and climbed off her. The Queen sat up gently, gingerly covering her breasts with cross arms. Her gaze never left Jon, a mix of shame and hope came over her features. But it was too late, the damage had been done.

They were broken.

He looked in horror to the blade in his hand, the weapon he was going to cut down his own … He wanted to drop it, to cast it out the window in his revulsion of himself. He looked to the beauty on the bed. The woman was filled with fear intermingled with the same love he had wanted for himself for so long. Between her naked form, her disheveled appearance, and the sword in hand, he remembered the story Tommen had told him of a drunken king and what he had done one dark night to this woman and her children. It would be a story that would haunt him from this night till the rest of his days. Haunt him, because for one uncontrollable second of anger, he had become everything he had arrived to avenge, to save her from. She had betrayed the love that had been taken from them, which they had, for one perfect moment, gotten back. And his response was to turn into the monster he had vowed to save her from. He had dishonored the memory of those who had fallen in his rage and actions since Bravos.

"Jon …" Cersei reached for him from the bed. "Please …" She shook her head. He hadn't noticed that he was backing away from her. Cersei held her hand out to him. "I didn't know …" The Queen sputtered in helplessness. "I'm sorry." She cried in a whisper.

But her tears, her apologies, it made it all the worse. All he could do was see the trauma on Tommen's face by the fire of his chambers in Winterfell. The images that they conjured fell over him in a torrent of shame. He was sick to his stomach, horrified of the look the woman was giving him. She wanted him, overlooking a moment of violence that she could never understand. All she knew was that Jon had wanted to kill her, to gut her, because he hated her for what she had done. No ghost, no phantom of some other time and place could erase that pure hatred for what she had offered him. He hadn't known what he wanted from Cersei when he stepped into this room, this manor, but he knew that wasn't it.

"Nothing makes sense anymore." He said in a stony daze of regret.

He had come for something, an idea, a feeling he never had. And he had been robbed of it, of all of it. He felt empty inside, felt worse than a villain, they were all dead …

And all of it was for nothing.

He turned and sheathed his blade. He collected his cloak and pack. Cersei got up from the mattress and padded toward Jon. He lifted his head, but he didn't look at her. "Don't …" He warned her as he collected his things, feeling her outstretched hand close. The Lord Commander wasn't sure what would happen if she had touched him. He didn't want to hurt her, didn't want to hurt anyone. But he didn't trust the sudden peace upon him. Caution and a deep shame kept Cersei and Jon apart.

When he turned the queen was still standing there. She looked vulnerable, exposed, and unguarded in her moment of honesty, open to heartbreak. But Jon didn't meet her eyes. He slung his pack over his shoulder with a jangle. "I don't know when I'll see you again." He said broodingly moving toward the door.

Cersei grabbed his arm. "I'll be there … tomorrow." She reported with a nod. "I won't leave you." She was still a vicious lioness in complete protection, even in her shame. There was something guilty and pained about the way Jon looked when she mentioned tomorrow. He turned to the queen as if it would be for the last time. He wanted to say something to her. She expected something from it all, but instead, the young man nodded and continued onward.

"Let me make it right …" Cersei suddenly begged. There was nothing more she could do, nothing more she could think of to show him how she felt, what it was to feel what she did for him, for all of the children that were left to her. "Tell me what you want and I'll do it, please, don't … don't do this to me again." The queen swallowed. She was barely hanging onto her sanity as she shook her head with a glare.

"It's too late."

The door opened with a clank and closed with a thud. Cersei stood in the dark, naked and alone. For a long moment she watched and waited. But nothing ever came of it. Quietly she walked over to her fallen night gown and picked it up. She felt faint and light headed from emotion. The luxurious silken slip was soft to the touch as the Queen scrunched the crimson fabric in her hands. Tears stained her eyes as she looked into the mirror and saw her reflection. She was everything any man could ever want and for that she cursed them all. She cursed her father, who taught her that her smooth and taught belly, what was between her legs was all that mattered in her life. She cursed her brother Jaime, forever wanting her in his bed, for taking each other whenever it was possible, thinking that was what love was. She cursed Robert for telling her over and over again that her face, her tits, and her ass, was all anyone would ever care about when it came to her. And most of all, she cursed Eddard Stark for loving her, for giving her everything she ever wanted, and always taking it away.

The queen collapsed on her bed and buried her angry, enraged sobs into her nightgown. She was filled with hate, anger, sadness, and a broken love. For one perfect flicker she had something, someone, that was all her own, that loved her in a way that no one else had. A conditionless love made of pure faith in her. But they slipped through her fingers, because she was selfish, because she was arrogant, because she was vain …

Because, Cersei Lannister didn't know what love was.

Acknowledgements

"Three Queens" – Heather Dale

Author's Notes

Despite DHH's "classy" review this is not a Troll chapter. Believe it or not this chapter was planned many years ago, when I retooled the story from its original chapter three. This, along with the tourney chapter, and the next chapter have been pre-planned for years. The only thing that changed was how this chapter ended. There was a happier ending that was cut, because it didn't fit with the characters.

I'm not gonna try to dictate anyone's opinions. My writing speaks for itself, you take it any way you want it. But I demand a bit of respect in my review section at all times. This story is a grind and it takes a lot out of me to do, more so than anything I've written before, this is why it takes so long. Also, if you want to know why the delay between last chapter and the one before it I was terribly wounded. Then the injuries weakened me to a point that I was in the hospital twice. Once out it took me ten months to recover. Within those months I had to get the edge back to take this story on again.

Also know that I write the characters as I see them and as I interpret them. Cersei Lannister is my second favorite character in the series. But I don't sanctify her, nor do I write her with a Disney lens. She's still an awful person, with a horrible childhood, and that shapes her ideas of herself and her life.

Next chapter is the Climax of the story. Only two chapters left people.