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It was a slow realisation for Mara that Petra suffered from bad dreams, she herself was a light and restless sleeper afterall, so it wasn't too surprising that Petra would sometimes jolt awake; take a minute or two, and then gather Mara up in her arms and go back to sleep. She herself had done the same thing, wake in the dead of night, shrug it off, curl back into Petra’s embrace and go right back into her dreams. She only realised something was amiss when Petra managed to jolt her awake with one of her more restless episodes; bolting upright and breathing hard as her hand automatically went for some kind of weapon.
Mara sat up behind her with a yawn, head cocked as she regarded the other woman’s stiff spine with worry.
“Are you okay?” she whispered softly after a moment of silence, trailing her fingers down the notches in Petra’s spine and around her waist in comfort; feeling her rock-hard muscles relax and untense steadily as she came back to the comforting darkness of their bedroom.
“I think so…” was the somewhat shaky reply as the former soldier reoriented herself and Mara continued her gentle grounding touches; wrapping her arms around Petra’s waist and resting her chin on her shoulder.
“Would you like to talk about it?” she asked gently. Petra shrugged her free shoulder and Mara waited patiently for an answer.
“Maybe in the morning,” Petra murmured after a minute of silence.
“Okay.” Mara said, pressing a gentle kiss into the side of Petra’s neck and slowly untangling her arms from her wife’s waist. “Don’t let me forget.” She added as she carefully coaxed Petra onto her back and curled into her side, fingers tracing idle patterns on her stomach as they both drifted back to sleep.
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Unusually, Mara was the first one to wake up the next morning, greeted immediately by sunlight streaming through her window. For a minute she wondered why her pillow was warm and breathing before their pre-dawn conversation came back to her in bits and pieces and she snuggled herself back into her wife’s loose embrace with a smile at the rare chance to enjoy how peaceful a sleeping Petra looked. Normally anyway; Mara’s mouth twisted into a pensive form as she remembered more of their midnight conversation.
“Poor Darling” she murmured into Petra’s neck, followed by a few light kisses.
Eventually, despite the allure of an adorable sleeping Petra, Mara began to crave breakfast with a passion; ever-so-gently, she started to disentangle herself from her sleeping wife, unlacing her fingers with painstaking precision and shifting slowly away with utmost care. Only to find a small dragon looking inquisitively up at her with big blue eyes as she slipped her feet over the edge of the bed and shivered at the cold air permeating the room. The Queen picked up Emily with a smile and the little ahamkara looked towards Petra’s still sleeping form with a tiny squeak; Mara smiled and shook her head.
“She’s very tired little one,” she whispered, “we need to let her sleep.” Emily stopped her squeaking and straining and quieted down, laying still in Mara's arms as she allowed herself to be carried to the kitchen and set down in front of her food bowl as Mara busied herself with the kettle.
She was just adding the sugar when Petra wandered in, rubbing her eye sleepily and immediately moving to wrap her arms around Mara; resting her chin on top of her head in her still half asleep state.
“G'mornin’” was summarily muttered into the crown of her wife's head as Mara carefully stirred their tea and took a sip, savoring the deliciously warm concoction as it slid down her throat. Petra, by contrast, snagged her mug with 2 fingers and promptly downed half of it with a pleased hum. Mara smiled and took another sip, relaxing back into Petra as she did so and revelling in how well their bodies fit together, she took a third sip, happy smile on her face as the warmth bloomed in her chest above her heart and Emily wound around her legs with some self-satisfied purring.
After a while, as Mara drained the last dregs of her tea and set the cup down, she felt Petra mumble into the top of her head.
“I assume you’ll want to talk about last night?”
“Only if you want to” Mara replied softly, turning around in Petra’s embrace and leaning up on her tiptoes to press a quick kiss to her lips before she parked her head under her chin again in a display of the tender side she only allowed her wife to see.
“It’s nothing really big” Petra said, “I just get a bad dream sometimes, it starts at the Pallas defense and always ends right before the knife…” she trailed off, lost in thought; and Mara hummed against her collarbone as she thought through the problem.
“What would help?”
“I don’t know” Petra shrugged, “I can’t think of anything that might.” Mara pursed her lips in thought.
“Would you like to see a doctor about it?”
Petra considered for a moment.
“If nothing else works, then I suppose it can't hurt, they don't seem to last after I wake up though, maybe they'll just go away on their own?” She shrugged again. “I really don't know…”
Mara kissed her cheek under the patch hiding her ruined eye from the world.
“We'll see darling, I'll look into it.”
Mara spent her day reading up on post traumatic stress disorder and nightmares, finding that a simple tactic that was often employed was the calming presence of a spouse or lover. So when the night rolled around she immediately snuggled herself straight into Petra's embrace, kissing her wife goodnight before tucking her head under her chin and closing her eyes. Petra closed her eyes and welcomed sleep cautiously, but soon the room was still bar little Emily's occasional snoring from the foot of the bed.
Petra was surprised to find that the next time she opened her eyes it was not after sitting bolt upright in a cold sweat but feeling refreshed to sunlight streaming gently in through their blinds. She looked down to find Mara's head still tucked under her chin, her wife's pridefully maintained hair tickling her nose as her chest rose and fell slowly, still enamored with sleep. Petra smiled, satisfied, and closed her eyes again letting the gentle rhythm of Mara's breathing lull her back into a peaceful rest.