armor. falling in and out of a restless sleep. feeling safe when a loved one presses a kiss to their forehead and strokes their hair.
WARNINGS for PTSD, injury, implied torture.
He had been an advocate for the end of the Dragonsung War since he had first heard of its terrible origins, had had his own blood spilled for daring to seek peace between man and dragon and still had refused to be cowed. He counted Vidofnir and Vedrfolnir among his friends, and encouraged his fellow Ishgardians to begin the process of healing and set aside their enmity in favor of learning to coexist with their Dravanian neighbors.
That did not mean he did not remember. That did not mean his nights were not haunted.
Tonight was one where, at the least, he knew he dreamed, his rational mind dulling the images flitting behind his eyelids from impossibly vivid to dull, hazy sensation. It meant, however, that the distant roars of an elder wyrm, the echoing shrieks of a falak, the sharp gust of wind of a wivere diving past, didn’t jolt him to full wakefulness as any of those normally would. That the smell of burning flesh, or the feeling of being thrown into the air by a charging carapace dragon, only pushed him up to the awareness of rolling to his back and kicking the quilt away, its weight too reminiscent of being pinned beneath the enormous paw of a lesser dragon, before he was dragged back down into the fog.
And then claws became knives. Bared fangs became sneers. The shape of Vishap bellowing fire twisted into the sadistic grin of Charibert. The snarling visage of a dragon morphed into the cold gaze of Zephirin, watching, waiting, judging. The blow of being swatted aside by a wyrm was suddenly Paulecrain’s fists in the depths of the Vault in his abdomen, then Grinnaux’s in his back.
He heard himself gasping heavily, trying to claw back to consciousness, felt the sweat that trickled down his spine. He finally, finally forced his eyes open and stared unseeing at the ceiling while he breathed raggedly, unsure if he was awake or still in the throes of memory and the shadows of the Church’s deepest dungeon, when he felt a hand, gentle and familiar, brush the hair from his eyes.
“Easy, darling,” murmured a much beloved voice, rough with sleep.
Aymeric turned his head, his breath rattling in his chest and then expelling in a rush of aching relief as Synnove, eyes squinted half-open and a small smile on her face, swam into focus. He could see Tyr behind her, the huge carbuncle stretched out and pressed up against her back, and the intensity of his aether dimmed to a soft, comforting golden glow.
Wordlessly, Synnove raised up her arm in invitation and Aymeric rolled into the space without hesitation, tucking his face into her neck with another gusty sigh. She kissed his temple, then his forehead, as she dropped her arm back down and wrapped it around his shoulders, burying her hand in the hair at his nape, and tossed her leg over his hip for good measure.
He snuggled closer, cinching his own arm around her waist (and having to shove his hand between her spine and Tyr to fully manage it), contentment settling over him like a comfortable blanket. As Synnove lazily pet him, humming low in her throat, Aymeric drifted back to blissfully dreamless sleep.
