The Worst of It

You can hold onto to pain, like it's a physical thing, like a lover's body in your arms, if you want to.

Hold it close, so close you can't see anything else, can't hear or feel or taste or smell anything but dark red inside your eyelids, the stuttering beat of your own heart, the ache and the sting and the sour tang of your own stale mouth.

It's not easy, though. The mind wants to slip away, trick itself into believing there's something else but the pain. The body gets tired of shaking and shivering and purging itself. The pain itself tries to escape you, to slip away into the dark so it can creep back and ambush you when your guard is down.

Nerila wrestled with the pain, clutched on to it, pinned it down and clung to it.    Fuck you, you're not getting away from me. 


You're mine.


There were voices, sometimes. The door opened occasionally. They brought her food, which she couldn't have stomached even if she'd been able to spare the attention. They cleaned her, not ungently.

They went away, and locked the door.

Each time the door opened Nerila felt her heart sink. The visits measured out the passage of time.

Time was her enemy. Time weakened the pain, or weakened her grip on it, Nerila wasn't sure which.

Time heals all wounds. 


Lies.

She fought harder, pulling the shreds of the pain closer to her as they dissolved in her grip, fell into them like fog, seeing nothing but the red haze of them, hearing nothing, feeling nothing but the ache in her bones and the roiling of her gut.

You can hold onto pain, like it's a lover in your arms, if you want to.

For a while.

"They tell me you're through the worst of it."


A familiar voice. A friend, or at least an ally, once, in the brief while Nerila'd been able to fool herself into thinking she was the sort of person who had friends or allies. 

The worst of it.

Matter of opinion.

"Nerila," Invelen said. "I know you can hear me."

Nerila rolled over and opened her eyes.  The ceiling of the brig was clear and sharp above her, as the lumps in the cot she lay on. She reached for the pain, stretched for it, tried to grasp it ...

Gone.

Her arms were empty.


"Yeah," she said. "Yeah. I can hear you."