Sadistic |Simon 'GHOST'//CLASSIFIED|

[Chapter Nine] I Paid With Your Rage

LOCATION: TEXAS MARINE BASE
TIME: [UNKNOWN]
ALISDAIR 'MOLOCH' BLAIRE, FRAEYA 'SIREN' THKOUVA
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  For the next couple of weeks Fraeya an Alisdair spent it trying to figure one another out. Their playful banter would rise and cease throughout the days like the coming and goings of the wind. Alisdair was respectful of her confusing personality switches, which he often times wanted to delve deeper into, but Fraeya would simply smile in response with a, "Go fuck yourself, Corporal." and he didn't mind. Though the questions only festered more with each passing day.

 He grew accustomed to her habits and routines which he acutely observed from day one, taking careful note of what she deemed important or did out of pure pleasure and satisfaction. The both of them would start their day together, the morning grogginess stubbornly clinging to their wakening minds as they fumbled to their respective showers, following after with PT, and then the mess hall. He was meticulous when it came to displaying any type of affection towards her for two reasons. One being their location and the meddling eyes that came with, and her. Fraeya was particular, which was putting it kindly. Since her outburst after SERE training she grew to be somewhat distant towards him romantically, simply asking how she was doing usually led to a dead end. He was quick to realize that she'd felt the need to close herself off, shutting off the emotional part of her mind the same way she did in the field in order to successfully co-exist with the sins of her doing. No matter how gently he tried to peel back the thickened layers to the softened underbelly that was Fraeya, she resisted. 

Although the weeks that they spent practically bound at the hip were somewhat peaceful an insightful, the third week granted him some answers through agonizing methods. The second day of the third week he was abruptly woken up by the forlorn gasps of Fraeya as she shot up in her bed. He shot a glance over to her, watching as a softened sob took refuge in her pained throat, sweat dribbling down her glistening forehead. Struggling against her own anguish she tore the mess of thin, cheap sheets off her legs, sitting upon the edge of the bed for a moment as the cool floor soothed her heated body. Her hands rose up to her hair, pushing back the stray strands that stuck to her forehead while beginning to stand. Alisdair wanted so desperately to ask her if she was okay, watching as she scooped up her pile of workout clothes that sat upon the floor from the previous day, but he chose to bite his tongue as she headed for the door, quietly pulling it open and vanishing past. 

Fraeya was prone to nightmares that came in increasing waves of intensity. Some days it would just be her body shooting up from the stiff mattress, numbing oscillates swallowing her body whole, while the worse days she would barely awaken to the shrill shrieks of her own personal hell. Those days lingered, shrouding her fragile mind with invasive deprecation. Sleep was never a viable option from that point on so she learned to cope in other ways, silently making way to the base gym. With her slim phone tight in her grasp, she'd push in her earbuds, pressing play on some tumultuous instrumental that would cut through the relentless shit. The thunderous bass would echo throughout her body as she headed over to the run down punching bag that tightly hung from a metal rack, allowing the music to increase her heart rate with a gradual euphoric sharpness spreading. She stood before the still bag, rolling her head left to right before making a full circle, every muscle and tendon loosening from it's tense hold. Flexing her digits outwards, she balled them into tight fists, roughly swinging into the roughened leather that retreated with each hit. She grew frustrated as every hit swung the bag back, having to wait for it's return before being able to swing again. Each hit scraped away a thin layer of skin across her jagged, uneven knuckles, shedding it away until blood rushed to the top. 

There was once a time when she wrapped her hands before venting her self inflicting negativities onto the punching bag, but the harder she swung her knuckles still bled, inking through the chalky bandaging until it covered a major percentage. That was the start of her insatiable taste for pain. Her trembling digits would uncoil the bandaging from her hands, feeling the cotton material cling to the weeping openings of her flesh. The gradual sting as the bandages tugged from her opened flesh would cause tears to flow from her eyes until one day...it didn't. The aftermath routine of her nightmares dug up an unconscious need for the pain to provide lucidity, until it was no longer about coherence, it was about the oddity of her growing enjoyment of pain and being in control of that much.