InsaneJournal

Fire, darkness, madness. Blood was splattered on every surface as the large horde moved through the villages, razing them to the ground as they pillaged and destroyed everything in their way. There were screams of the dying, people running, and all hope seemed lost. Fires raged further on, buildings were collapsing and eventually, the distant roar of a dragon swooped overhead.

Bethany, in full Grey Warden armor, made her way through the crowd, staff in hand. She blasted apart Darkspawn as they raged ahead, and stopped one from slicing through an escaping child.

But she wasn’t quick enough for the second, or the third, or the fourth, as they ravaged through the area, killing everything they came across, and soon, she was surrounded, bloodied and barrier quickly fading.

Before the sword could strike true, she jolted awake with a scream on her lips, sitting up in bed in an instant and instantly gasping for breath. Gooseflesh covered her body as she started cooling from the air hitting her sweat-soaked skin. She hadn’t had a dream like that in months. Since arriving here, where it was safe.

Shepard had woken from quite a few nightmares in his life, but rarely been the other person. It was alarming, snapping awake at Bethany’s abrupt movement and the sound of her gasp sending his pulse racing. His biotics thrummed along his skin in an instant, ready to attack. To protect. But a scan of the room confirmed they were alone. Shepard pressed a hand to her back, gently.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Hey, are you okay? Nobody’s here. You’re safe.” He kept his voice low and soothing, and his touch cautious.

Bethany brought her hand up to rub her fingers against her eyes, closing them against the still-flashing visions of her dream. It seemed to hit her harder now that they had been all but gone for nearly a year, but it brought forward an instant worry of why they were suddenly appearing again.

An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of her stomach as she nodded an answer to Shepard’s quiet question. She glanced to the side, looking at him with a forced smile on her lips. “It’s just a Maker damned nightmare. You can go back to sleep, John.” She always opted for his first and lesser used name when they were in bed, simply out of a determination to set herself apart from literally everyone else in their lives. Truthfully, it was more of a joke than anything else, but she hoped it’d at least ease his worry. Maker only knew it wasn’t actually taking care of hers.

Normally, her answer might have worked. Probably not, with the kind of person Shepard was, but it would’ve at least stood a better chance than now. Now, Shepard still hadn’t quite come down from all the Kaidan-related tension of the last week and now that the immediate emergency was over, Bethany was likely to get more of his intense brand of focus than she already had. Shepard sat up, rubbing circles into her back.

“Yeah, maybe in a bit,” he murmured. “You want to talk about this nightmare?”

Bethany was torn between not going into detail for Shepard’s sake and also just getting it off her chest - but she knew how much he and his crew had been through in the last few months, and had no real desire to put this sort of uneasy feeling on him.

She let out a sigh and settled back, tucking her head into his neck. Every muscle in her body was tense, but he was warm and large and easy to melt into even with that stress. “The Wardens don’t tell you about the nightmares when it comes to linking you to the Darkspawn. But then they didn’t have time to tell me much of anything before my Joining. I-” Realizing she was unloading more than she meant in the middle of the night, Bethany cut off for a second before going on. “It’s been a while since I had one. It took me by surprise, that’s all.”

It was a relief to have her sink against him, breaking that post-nightmare uncertainty where sometimes touch was the opposite of helpful. Shepard rested his head against hers and curled his arms around her. Not tight, but solid. Protective. He’d always been good at being a barrier between the people he cared about and whatever was out to get them, physical or otherwise. Bethany damn sure wasn’t the exception. She could very well be the rule.

“Does it mean something?” Shepard pressed a kiss to her forehead, caressing a hand up and over her shoulder. “That they’ve started back up again?”

“I-” She wanted to say no right away. Or give some sort of definitive answer. “I don’t know. It could just be a nightmare. Something from all the stress of the month.” Anything at all involving the Darkspawn was sure to put her on edge, especially here, when things were supposed to be different. But it stood to reason that if any number of monsters could come through, the Darkspawn were no exception.

But Shepard was warm and comforting, and that helped ease her worry more than her own thoughts did. She closed her eyes for a second and just enjoyed the feeling of him. “Once it’s light out, I’ll tell the people from my world and we can go look around.” She let out the deep breath she’d been holding, and relaxed just a little more. “Thank you.” Her next words were probably unfair, given the situation, but Bethany leaned up to kiss him on the jaw, where she could reach. “I love you.”

Her plan had Shepard nodding before it was even fully out of her mouth. Part of him would always be the Soldier. Even more so the Commander. A problem came up, he made a plan to handle it. If someone else made the same plan he would’ve made, he was happy to follow along. But there was also the part of him that just wanted to pull her in closer and say fuck it to Darkspawn and the thing inside her that made sensing them even possible. The thing that was slowly killing her. Which they really needed to do something about, before the next crisis hit and everyone was--

Shepard’s rambling thoughts cut short at her declaration. He sat up a little straighter, pulling his head back to see her face. The heavy warmth in his chest and the somberness of the moment made his smile dawn a little slow and crooked, but it wasn’t any less tender for it.. Stroking a hand up from her shoulder to caress her neck, Shepard dipped his head to kiss her, pressing the heady feeling in his heart into her mouth.

“I love you too,” he pulled back to say, quiet and earnest. “And whatever this is, big or small, I’m here for you. I’ve got your back, okay?”

“And my front?” Bethany smiled up at him, and ducked her head in for another quiet snuggle. The worry of Darkspawn could hold at bay for a few hours, Bethany knew that. She would know if there was an imminent attack, or Darkspawn near them. Right now things were still vague, quiet, murmurs in the back of her mind, not the normal urging. They had people here that knew how to battle them, even so, which only served to help ease her mind.

“You know,” She looked up at him through her lashes and messy hair. “A great number of people have made promises like that to me before, but you are the first one I think I trust with those words. Whatever this is, we’re in it together.”

“And your everything,” Shepard smirked. The cheeky tilt to his smile softened and he pulled her down with him as he laid back in the bed. Someone trusting him was a big deal for Shepard. Someone he cared about trusting him was huge. He couldn’t couldn’t even put it into words. So he didn’t. He just hooked a leg over her hip and pressed his face into her throat. No way they’d get back to sleep like this, but sleep could wait a few minutes.