The Cost of Loving Her
George held tight to her one last time before she had to go again. He said good-bye to her and told her how much he loved her, and she replied the same in return. And then... she left.
She would be back again, he told himself. She was the Lioness, beautiful and strong and his. She would come back to Pirate's Swoop again. He did not know when, but she would come back.
He had been through this countless times before, but it never hurt any less.
Her absence had a distinct feeling to it. It was the feel of his empty bed, still made on the other side. It was the taste of tears in the back of his throat, tears that he hid from her as she went and from his children and other members of his household. It was the sight of his daughter, a face that looked so much like her mother's. It was hearing news of her from far away, and the pang that it left in his chest.
Each time he opened a letter, he feared the worst. And each time, so far, that fear was met with relief.
He treasured each letter she sent to him, and he kept them in a stack in his workroom. Often he would read the latest letter again and again and again, as a vain attempt to make it substitute her. Though it failed miserably to substitute her, it comforted him to read them.
He did not regret loving her; he could not stop loving her. Yet his love came with a heavy cost.
It came with the cost of sleepless nights, nights filled with worry and loneliness and the pang of his empty heart. It came with the cost of seeing or hearing something and thinking of her, before realizing that she wouldn't be there and that he couldn't tell it to her. It came with the cost of remembering her at random moments in his day; the feeling her hair through his fingers and the taste of her on his tongue were phantom pains to him, and in those moments he felt like he had lost a limb.
This is what he agreed to take on when he married a knight. This was what he should have expected; loving a knight meant that this was the life he had to live and those were the sacrifice he had to make.
He would never take that away from her, of course, though he would have rather that she would be able to stay with him all of the time. Knighthood filled Alanna with a passion, determination and dedication that nothing else could give her.
Despite the sacrifices, there some things that he benefited from it.
He supposed that her homecomings were one of the few things he had to look forward to, at least; as he got older the number of things he had to look forward to become less and less and less.
It also made him treasure the moments that he had with her even more than he already had.
Though, no matter the costs, no matter the benefits, he would always be there waiting for her. He would always be there when he got back.
Okay, so this is a little sappy piece for September's prompt. I was originally going to do this about the cost of loving Alanna while she was with Jon but it lead to this (and I think this idea is better quite frankly). Please review!