Masochism.



Is it so terrible to enjoy the pain?

It was uncomfortable to lie like this.

But at least, Ashaia supposed, her vantage point from laying upon this moth-eaten cot did not obscure the slow shift of the rippling river. Catching the light of a dying sun, the water upon the horizon was tinged a bloody red. The last of the magnificent rays, which the sun could expel before it bestowed it's final farewells to the earth, came in slices of an orange blaze between the gaps in her fingers, hand held up at eye-level to fragment the glare.

The moment was reminiscent of her son's birth in which she had lay, in the same uncomfortable fashion, lulled only by the weight of a small, sleeping newborn babe nestled against her bare chest. Fingertips gracing the soft skin of her son's back as it rose ever so gently with each miniscule breath. Brienne would have gladly had him for her own but even she found it beneficial to allow the child a quiet moment to enjoy nothing but the slow, rhythmic beat of his mother's heart.

His father had gifted him the inability to be punctual, for he had been late. A week to be precise and his arrival could not have come more timely, for in that moment the sun rose, rather than set as it did now upon High King's Crossing.

Ashaia had cried for this boy's father one time too many. Olive eyes turned to honey in the haze. Tears of gold for a man she had thought gone for so long that his heart had grown rich. The buried treasure she now guarded from the nameless locusts who came in swarms of envy and desire.

She had given him much. Her undivided dedication for years and years. And had she expected him to show up at her door again? Unaware that she had birthed a child of his blood?

She had been certain that he had floated away. Somewhere in amidst the swirls of repressed memories whilst she had wrenched out her own heart for him. The masochistic nature of wanting to feel the hurt he had brought to her as he, surely, had found solace in someone new. Or someone old, for there were many who would certainly take to the stage and try.

Try to love him. Try to exercise the same level of care of which she had brought to him.

Too many nights she had spent wallowing in self-pity and longing. The plushness of a pillow catching these golden tears when no one else would ask what was wrong.

The pain was devastating. The sensation of burning lungs submerged beneath the tempestuous water, unable to surface for that next breath of life. She was but a stone sinking silently to the lowest depths of his ocean. The pain was near-unbearable but a keen reminder that she still honed the ability to feel. 

That humanising thought, alone, welcomed the hurt.

One's mind worked in funny ways. And hers was certain that he had sought out happiness and security in the months, if not years, that she was experiencing hell. An immovable, overbearing hell that weighed heavy on her chest. Not quite like the small form of her son curled up there but rather a boulder, pushing against her lungs with the intention to suffocate.

She burned for him then when she had so much time and he had so much freedom. She burned for him now when his freedom had be sated to spend the rest of his time with her.

For she was the medicine to cure his sickness of unfulfillment.

Yet the resonating anxiety that he would leave again probed at her thoughts like a persisent itch. That meticulously crafted fortress around herself would sometimes buckle under the pressure that her efforts were simply not good enough to hold on to him.

She had always begged the question from the second their hands had touched in a passing gesture: how could she ever love someone else?

The question could harm her. That sickening, churning sensation in the pit of her stomach was a feeling that she would greet as an old friend if she ever fell back into the spiral and it came back to haunt her. 

How could I ever love someone else?

She had never been as ghostly pale as this but with the lack of blood in her system, she was particularly weak. The gash in her side had since been tended to and bandaged yet it was far too delicate to touch. Wounds like these were troublesome for one's mobility but she had known them all the same for many years. Namely the gap in between, when her life seemed to spiral uncontrollably and his arms were not there to tear away the darkest portion of the night to keep it from consuming her.

Her wounds had patterned her wrists or the inside of her thighs then. 

Her waist had now been on the receiving end of an orc's spear and those wrists had fallen victim to thoughts much darker and sharper than any weapon.

He would have traced those marks left behind if she had asked. Skin held the memories of where it had been and she had grown to know him so well to believe he would cherish them. Like an open book, she nestled quite safely in between his pages, his veins reminiscent of the swirling, sloping ink of handwriting. 

His story could unfold one of two ways: it would go on and on and she had often feared, in the time between, that she would not be apart of it. That he would forget her. And he would flourish quite magnificently in her absence. Yet something deep within them both knew this to be false and more experiences were destined to be chronicled.

Or the alternative: he would find resolution. Without her, he would surely perish. Or with her, he would have found contentment, confident in the knowledge that he had sought out what he had been looking for and conclude his tale for himself. The words along his pages coming to a definite, sudden halt without a continuation or indication.

In the middle of a sentence, he would be fulfilled.

He needed her and she, him. A fact which had haunted them both for years. For not a day had passed since their first destined meeting that her thoughts had not fallen back to him. He was her past, present and promised to be her future. Reassured in the fact that his story would finish with her - abruptly or not. Bringing with it the bittersweet concoction of the love and the longing and the pain.

That same pain, that familiar hurt which felt so damaging and yet reminded her that she was still here. Alive. At that current moment, injured. The physical ache to substitute for the mental debilitation she had subjected to her own self for so long. 

The honeysuckle smell of her daughter's hair or the soft touch of her son's small hands were reason enough to believe that this temporary pain of a spear-shaped wound would come to pass and for now, she merely had to hold on. Through the gritted teeth and the changing of dressings, this was child's play compared to what her mind could demonstrate. 

Throw her in the deep end. She was ready now to swim.

Her children deserved a resilient mother and they gave her reason to turn away from the glare of the sunset and lie still, timing her breaths to slow them and accept the waves of pain searing from the cut.

Dry, pale lips curling into a slight smile despite this, it would not be long before her beloved would return from his night time wanderings to sit at her bed side and subject her to his best terrible jokes to battle the insistent stinging.

But for now, awaiting his return, she knew that it was good to hurt. Physically. Emotionally. It was good to bask in the feelings so strong that they threatened to burst from her chest. It was good to